JSON (post_name) changes on every save

• alpipego

• July 2, 2015 at 11:04 pm

Hi,
I have noticed a very strange behaviour today. The post_name for an acf-field-group changes on every save and through this a new group_***.json is created on every save as well.

I first noted this when changes to field groups I made, did not show up in the backend on a custom post type.
Simultaneously there are several _Notices_ in the _Options_ section of “Edit Field Group”:

Notice: Undefined index: menu_order in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 15 
Notice: Undefined index: position in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 26 
Notice: Undefined index: style in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 43 
Notice: Undefined index: label_placement in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 58 
Notice: Undefined index: instruction_placement in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 73 
Notice: Undefined index: hide_on_screen in advanced-custom-fields-pro/admin/views/field-group-options.php on line 88

I am running WP 4.1 and ACF PRO 5.2.2 (a brief upgrade to ACF PRO 5.2.7 did not resolve the issue).

Any ideas on what is happening and how to fix it?

• John Huebner

• July 3, 2015 at 8:59 am

I haven’t seen anything like this in ACF. My fist guess would be that there is some type of a filter or something that is causing the post to be duplicate rather than updated. The first thing I would do is deactivate other plugins and then if that does not work to try changing to the default WP theme to see if I could narrow down where the incompatibility might be.

• alpipego

• July 3, 2015 at 5:37 pm

Thank you for your answer John. I have been going through the default WordPress troubleshooting already, without any luck.

I narrowed it down to a filter acf/load_field/key= which is used to fill a select dynamically. The obviously problematic part was a WP_Query object:

function allPosts($field)
{
    $field['choices'] => array();

    $query = new WP_Query(array(
        'post_type' => 'any',
        'posts_per_page' => -1,
    ));

    if ($query->have_posts()) {
        while ($query->have_posts()) {
            $query->the_post();

            $field['choices'][$query->post->ID] = $query->post->post_title;
        }
    }

    return $field;
}

I substituted this with get_posts() and now it is working again (and yes, there is a reason why I didn’t use a relationship field).

But there are still some things I’d like to understand:
a) Why should WP_Query be a problem in this context?
b) Why didn’t this happen consistently?
c) Why should a filter be able, to break the post_name of a field group?

Thank you.

• John Huebner

• July 3, 2015 at 9:42 pm

That query could most definitely be causing part of you problem. There are 2 things, 1 is that I’m not sure it can work and get what you want, the other is that your not resetting post data.

function allPosts($field)
{
    global $post; // without this you can't access $post-> below
    $field['choices'] => array();

    $query = new WP_Query(array(
        'post_type' => 'any',
        'posts_per_page' => -1,
    ));

    if ($query->have_posts()) {
        while ($query->have_posts()) {
            $query->the_post(); // this alters the global $post value
            
            // since your using the_post()
            // may as well use $post here
            $field['choices'][$post->ID] = $post->post_title;
        }
    }
    // reset post data
    wp_reset_postdata();
    return $field;
}

• alpipego

• July 6, 2015 at 4:59 pm

Thank you for your answer John. I don’t know how I missed that wp_reset_postdata();.