Pre-populate mulitiple Repeater rows

• daveoudshoorn

• March 7, 2020 at 12:31 am

Hi there,

I’m using a repeater field with two sub fields: Caption (select) and Team Member (Taxonomy).

I’d like to pre-populate something like 8 rows with the Caption (select), so the editor doesnt have to add it manually each time.

I searched the forums and found this, but it doesnt work:

// Add pre-populated Repeater Fields
function my_acf_load_value($value, $post_id, $field) {
  if ($value !== NULL) {
    // if the value is exactly NULL it means
    // the field has never been updated
    // we don't want to change fields that have already been editied
    return $value;
  }
  // set the new field value
  $value = array(
    // add a nested array for each row
    array(
      // add an array item for each sub field
      'caption' => 'Production',
      'team_member' => 'Test'
    ),
    array(
      // add an array item for each sub field
      'caption' => 'Advertiser',
      'team_member' => 'Test2'
    )
  );
  return $value;
}
add_filter('acf/load_value/name=team', 'my_acf_load_value', 20, 3);

Any suggestions?

• John Huebner

• March 8, 2020 at 3:18 am

Two things you can try,

1) Lower the priority of your filter to < 10 add_filter('acf/load_value/name=team', 'my_acf_load_value', 1, 3);
2) Try using the field key instead of the field name add_filter('acf/load_value/jkey=field_XXXXXXX', 'my_acf_load_value', 20, 3);

• daveoudshoorn

• March 11, 2020 at 3:17 am

Hi John,

Unfortunately both options did nothing to the fields.

Adding some echo text in between the function makes it seem like it’s not running at all? Any other way to test this?

Thanks!

• John Huebner

• March 15, 2020 at 12:06 am

If it’s not running at all then that’s another issue. Where is your code located? Place this at the top of the function to see if anything is output to know if the filter is running

var_dump($value);

• daveoudshoorn

• March 31, 2020 at 9:32 pm

Hi John,

I’ve tried this on a fresh install and it doesn’t work either.

• When I comment out if if ($value !== NULL) it at least gets to the $value array. If I don’t, it always seems to return NULL.
• The $value array runs, but only creates a repeater for each array (2 in the example) but the fields themselves are empty.
• Var dump returns array(2) { [0]=> array(2) { ["title"]=> string(10) "Production" ["member"]=> string(7) "Testone" } [1]=> array(2) { ["title"]=> string(6) "Artist" ["member"]=> string(7) "Testtwo" } }

Thank you for your efforts so far!

• John Huebner

• March 31, 2020 at 10:35 pm

• Test the value of an empty repeater, it may be NULL or it may be false. Check this by placing var_dump($value); at the top of your filter.
• You must use field keys to populate the repeater and not field names. This is why the rows are created but have no values.

• daveoudshoorn

• March 31, 2020 at 11:30 pm

Thanks John,

The empty $value returns bool(false).

I currently use the following which seems to work:

// Add pre-populated Repeater Fields
function my_acf_load_value($value, $post_id, $field) {
  
  if ($value !== FALSE) {
    return $value;
  }
  $value = array(
    array(
      'field_5e8317693aa96' => 'Production',
    ),
    array(
      'field_5e8317693aa96' => 'Director',
    ),
    array(
      'field_5e8317693aa96' => 'Author',
    ),
    array(
      'field_5e8317693aa96' => 'Artist',
    ),
    array(
      'field_5e8317693aa96' => 'Etc'
    )
  );
  return $value;

}
add_filter('acf/load_value/name=team', 'my_acf_load_value', 1, 3);

Thanks a bunch!