Problem using update_field with user field

• esedeerre

• May 6, 2015 at 6:51 pm

Hi, i´ve a custom field called “administradores”. Type of field is “User” and it supports multiple selection.

If i update a post with that field on the WP Admin, i get something like that on wp_postmeta table:

a:1:{i:0;s:1:”1″;}

When i update that field using add_post_meta function, i use this:

add_post_meta($post_id,’administradores’,$administradores);

$administradores is an array of user IDs.

However, if i update that field via WP API, using add_post_meta or ACF update_field function, i get something like:

a:1:{i:0;i:1;}

It looks like ACF works both ways, because y see the right data on WP admin. But the problem is that i have to use a reverse query on my theme, something like:

‘meta_query’ => array(
‘relation’ => ‘AND’,
array(
‘key’ => ‘administradores’,
‘value’ => ‘:’ . $current_user->ID . ‘;’,
‘compare’ => ‘LIKE’
)
)

and it dont work if i update the field via webservice. I´m using ACFPro v5.2.3, but same thing happens with last version of ACF.

How can i update a user field properly????

• James

• May 7, 2015 at 9:22 pm

Hi @esedeerre

For complex fields, ACF stores the value in wp_postmeta as a serialized PHP array.

Hmm… I believe you should be able to update the user field using update_field(…) function. The code should look something like this:

$administradores[] = $new_user_id;
update_field( $field_key, $administradores, $post_id );

where $new_user_id is the ID of a new user and $administradores contains user IDs of the previously selected users.

• esedeerre

• May 8, 2015 at 12:26 am

Thank you James.

Using update_field i have the same result as using add_post_meta:

a:1:{i:0;i:1;}

Again, no quotes.

I´ve tried also to pass an array of user objects, or force quotes on my array of ids, but it don´t work 🙁

• James

• May 10, 2015 at 4:12 am

Hi @esedeerre

Hmm… On wp-admin, ACF saves the user ID as a string and that is why you get this: a:1:{i:0;s:1:”1″;} therefore you should pass a string array of user IDs in update_field(…) to obtain the same results as in wp_admin i.e. something like this: array('1', '2', '3', ...);