Maximum number of sub fields

• tuhin

• February 6, 2014 at 2:59 am

I was creating a series of custom fields within a repeater field. I choose ‘row’ layout to make it look nicer on wp-admin. However, it seems that once the fields number went above 23, the layout automatically switched to ‘table’. I tried a lot of time, went through each and every field item several times to find out where the problem is generating. Later on I deleted a number of fields and then I could switch layout back to ‘row’ again.

It seems repeater field has limit on number of fields it would allow inside it.

attachment: this is how it looks when I deleted a few fields to make the custom fieldsets working again.

acf-issue.pn....png

• michele

• February 6, 2014 at 9:00 am

So many fields and repeater fields in one big repeater? I can tell you that this thing will broke as fast as possible.

Is it possible that you create flexible layouts and put the repeater in there? For myself i got only 1 repeater in an flexible field and it is an performance issue already… what you trying to do is crazy. 😀

• tuhin

• February 6, 2014 at 9:51 pm

Thanks Michele,

It is really good to know that flexible layout could be a probable solution. But what I believe is, if there is a limitation in using maximum number of repeater within repeater, wouldn’t it be better to include it in the documentation? Or if there is a performance issue using repeater within repeater, wouldn’t it be better to add it to the documentation as well?

Reason for all the fields inside a repeater field is that all those fields might be used more than once. The way I have to arrange repeater fields in this case, because that is how I wanted to make it easier for client to handle content editing job. However, If I knew ‘repeater’ field has limitations, then I would have thought it differently.

I would really appreciate if you can add a note to the documentation saying that using repeater inside repeater would sometime not work, as it would help other developers planning their work.

Regards,

Tuhin

• Elliot

• February 7, 2014 at 1:19 pm

Hi @tuhin

Thanks for your concern. All servers have a limit of how many PHP variables can be used at one time, and how big an array variable can be.

Your repeater field is perhaps the larges I have ever seen, and this field was not intended to be used in this manor.

ACF does not contain a limit, but PHP does. It is possible to increase this max_vars limit and PHP memory like so:
http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/faq/losing-data-save/

Thanks
E

• tuhin

• February 7, 2014 at 8:55 pm

Thanks Elliot,

That really helps a lot.

Tuhin