Prefilling fields not visible to user

• SJLiquroish

• August 15, 2020 at 9:02 am

Hi Guys,

Forgive me if this is an obvious question but a complete beginner in the world of coding.

Is there anyway I can prefill part of the form which the user can’t see but it does it automatically. I have a few ideas for this for example:

URL – prefill https://
Phone number – prefill tel:
Instagram username: prefill https://Instagram.com/ (so all they need to input is there username).

Will appreciate any help i can get in this thanks.

• John Huebner

• August 18, 2020 at 1:28 am

https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acf-prepare_field/

• SJLiquroish

• August 18, 2020 at 2:04 am

Thanks John, I had wondered if this was the answer to my question in research. So thanks for confirming.

• SJLiquroish

• August 19, 2020 at 4:23 am

Hi John, I am adding the following to my theme functions file but not having much luck.

function my_acf_prepare_field( $field ) {

    // Lock-in the value "https://instagram.com/".
    if( $field['value'] === 'https://instagram.com/' ) {
        $field['readonly'] = true;
    };
    return $field;
add_filter('acf/prepare_field/name=instagram', 'my_acf_prepare_field');
	}

Is it because I am using the ACF Frontend plugin?

Thanks in advance

• John Huebner

• August 21, 2020 at 1:28 am

You need to put add_filter() outside of the function

function my_acf_prepare_field( $field ) {

    // Lock-in the value "https://instagram.com/".
    if( $field['value'] === 'https://instagram.com/' ) {
        $field['readonly'] = true;
    };
    return $field;
}
add_filter('acf/prepare_field/name=instagram', 'my_acf_prepare_field');

• SJLiquroish

• August 21, 2020 at 1:46 am

Thanks for confirming John, still no luck for me unfortunately.

Screenshot-2....png

• John Huebner

• August 21, 2020 at 1:55 am

I just noticed that you are no setting the value, only trying to make it readonly if it’s already set to a specific value. Maybe I’m confused about what you’re trying to do.

• SJLiquroish

• August 21, 2020 at 2:06 am

Perhaps, let me try and share some more insight, I have a front end form which people fill in to customise a profile on the front end too. I would like the https://instagram.com/ to be filled in the field before they even touch the form but not visible. So I can then label the field “instagram username” when they put there username in it creates the value https://instagram.com/username for a button to be clicked and redirected to their instagram profile.

• John Huebner

• August 30, 2020 at 11:45 pm

I would not bother with a field for the Instagram URL. I would just have a “intagram user name” field and then if it’s filled in then output the url in code, something like this:

if (get_field('intagram_user_name')) {
  ?><a href="https://instagram.com/<?php 
        the_field('intagram_user_name'); ?>" target="_blank>Instagram</a><?php 
}

Storing the actual URL to instagram for every user seems like a waste of DB space.