Order of fields in ACF get_fields();

• vandelay

• November 25, 2017 at 5:26 am

hi.

So the way I’m using ACF is I have lots of fields in my post and then I print them all out from the get_fields() object using 7 nested loops which check for types and do styling and other magic.

It works great. There is only 1 problem.

Lets say I have fields:

field1
field2
field3

Then I want to duplicate field2, call it NewField and position between 2 and 3. I drag and drop in the fields editor so it looks like:

field1
field2
NewField
field3

great. I go to post editor and the order is fine. But later when i look at the frontend the order of the fields printed out is:

field1
field2
field3
NewField

The reason is, the array get_field() is populated in order of the fields being created and it doesn’t change when I reorder the fields in the backend.
Is there a possibility to reorder the array rows to resemble the order in the backend editor?

thanks a million!

• vandelay

• November 26, 2017 at 9:02 pm

solved it using something like this

  $fields = get_field_objects();
   if( $fields ):	
      $fields = array_orderby($fields, 'menu_order', SORT_ASC);
      foreach( $fields as $name => $value ):
        [...]

function to order multidensional array:

function array_orderby()
					{
    					$args = func_get_args();
    					$data = array_shift($args);
    					foreach ($args as $n => $field) {
        				if (is_string($field)) {
            				$tmp = array();
           					foreach ($data as $key => $row)
                			$tmp[$key] = $row[$field];
            				$args[$n] = $tmp;
            			}
    				}
    					$args[] = &$data;
    					call_user_func_array('array_multisort', $args);
    					return array_pop($args);
					}

• Origem

• April 27, 2020 at 8:26 pm

Hi vandelay,

the problem you describe is excactly what I stumbled on as well. While looking for a solution I came across your post.

I tried to adapt your code from above, but I think I don´t get it.

Here is code I am using right now, where the sorting order of the field is still wrong:

$lifestyle_data_fields = get_fields($post->ID);

// Here I need to get the fields and order them like they are ordered in the WP-Backend for a lifestyle_data post (or like they are ordered in the field-group, which is the same)

foreach ($lifestyle_data_fields as $name => $values) {
    if ($values) {
              foreach ($values as $value) {
                ...

Now I tried to adapt your code to match mine:

$lifestyle_data_fields = get_fields($post->ID);

function array_orderby()
	{
		$args = func_get_args();
		$data = array_shift($args);
		foreach ($args as $n => $field) {
    			if (is_string($field)) {
        			$tmp = array();
       				foreach ($data as $key => $row)
            			$tmp[$key] = $row[$field];
        			$args[$n] = $tmp;
        			}
			}
			$args[] = &$data;
			call_user_func_array('array_multisort', $args);
			return array_pop($args);
	}

$lifestyle_data_fields = array_orderby( $lifestyle_data_fields, 'menu_order', SORT_ASC);

foreach ($lifestyle_data_fields as $name => $values) {
    if ($values) {
              foreach ($values as $value) {
                ...

But I get an error message “Warning: Illegal string offset ‘menu_order’ ” and the sorting order is not changed.

Can you or somebody else help me to get this sorted?

Thanks in advance for any input,
Hendrik