Problem with Local Dev, Symbolic Links, & Asset Paths

• gato-gordo

• February 10, 2015 at 9:23 am

In general, I use MAMP for local development, with a WordPress installation that is installed locally, but with a wrinkle: “wp-content” in my local installation is actually a symbolic link to a folder that resides in Dropbox.

This is causing issues with the paths for ACF’s CSS and JS assets.

In my console, I see a bunch of failed http requests that look like so, for any ACF asset:

http://localhost:8888/wp/Users/asterion/Dropbox/_GATOGORDO/CLIENT_FILES/14.09_APS/website/test/wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/css/global.css?ver=4.4.0

Everything after wp/ is the absolute/real/non-symbolic path to the file, whereas a successful request would have been:

http://localhost:8888/wp/wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/css/global.css?ver=4.4.0

How can I override this behavior so that I can develop locally using symbolically linked files? I only have this problem with ACF and its add-ons.

• timmyblog

• March 4, 2015 at 8:54 am

I just bought the pro version of the plugin, and I am also having the same issue on a local installation with paths not pulling in JS and CSS when the plugin is included in a theme directory, not as a plugin.

I see that there are a few path settings at the top of acf.php, but I’m not sure if I should be changing these or not:

Any ideas?

			// urls
			'basename'			=> plugin_basename( __FILE__ ),
			'path'				=> plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ),
			'dir'				=> plugin_dir_url( __FILE__ ),

• James

• June 20, 2016 at 6:56 pm

Hi @gato-gordo,

Thanks for the post.

You can customize the paths and directory that has ACF by making use of the acf/settings filter.

// 1. customize ACF path
add_filter('acf/settings/path', 'my_acf_settings_path');
 
function my_acf_settings_path( $path ) {
 
    // update path
    $path = get_stylesheet_directory() . '/acf/';
    
    // return
    return $path;
    
}
 

// 2. customize ACF dir
add_filter('acf/settings/dir', 'my_acf_settings_dir');
 
function my_acf_settings_dir( $dir ) {
 
    // update path
    $dir = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/acf/';
    
    // return
    return $dir;
   }

// 4. Include ACF
include_once( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/acf/acf.php' );

• doogie

• March 23, 2017 at 9:48 am

I am using the free version of this plugin. It is installed globally, *not* via another plugin or theme. As such, it exists at /wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/.

However, in my deloyment, /wp-content/plugins is actually a symlink to “../../wordpress/plugins”, which resolves to /srv/php/$job_name/wordpress/plugins/. Uploads and themes are done the same way. It was done like this, because the entirety of wordpress is built with a docker image, and is mounted RO, to prevent file overwrite intrusion attempts.

I am also seeing js/css urls like http://$host_name/srv/php/$job_name/wordpress/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/….

This is due to using __FILE__ in the __construct() function, and then attempting to send that in the enque_script/enqueue_style callouts. Adding a filter in my job_plugin, or job_theme, won’t help, as the advanced-custom-fields plugin is initialized *first*, so the acf/helpers/get_dir filter has already run.