Repeater fields not showing up before manual update of the post

• heinoleino11

• May 15, 2020 at 11:08 pm

I have developed a plugin which fetches posts from another websites API. I have two post types on my local site: post1 and post2
Plugin compares post1 to post2 and syncs only the missing post2 posts from the API.

So, a new post is generated:

function insert_local_post( $local_post ) { // insert new post

    $post_data = array(
        'post_type'      => 'post2',
        'post_status'    => 'private',
        'comment_status' => 'closed',
        'ping_status'    => 'closed',
        'post_author'    => 1,
        'post_name'      => $local_post->post_name,
        'post_title'     => $local_post->post_title,
        'post_date'      => $local_post->post_date,
        'post_date_gmt'  => $local_post->post_date_gmt,
        'post_content'    => '',
    );

    $new_post = wp_insert_post( $post_data );

    if ( $new_post ) {

        update_field( 'unique_identifier', get_field( $this->local_post_identifier, $local_post->ID ), $new_post );

    }
    return $new_post;
}

After creating the post, post status gets changed to ‘publish’ and updating the fields is called:

$publish = array( 'ID' => $ID, 'post_status' => 'publish' );
            wp_update_post($publish);

            $this->update_local_fields( 'fields1', $fields, $ID);
            $this->update_local_fields( 'fields2', $fields, $ID);
            $this->update_local_fields( 'fields3', $fields, $ID);

For fields I have a field conf file with a hierarchical set of extra field names. Same hierarchical structure as the fields coming from the API.

Function for updating the fields:

function update_local_fields( $field_group_name, $fields, $ID ) {

    foreach ( $this->field_conf[$field_group_name] as $field_key => $field_name ) {

        if ( ! is_numeric( $field_key ) ) { 
            $this->delete_local_repeater_fields( $field_key, $ID );
            $this->insert_local_repeater_fields( $field_key, $ID, $fields->$field_key, $field_group_name );
            continue;
        }

        if ( $fields->$field_name and
            ( $field_name == 'taxonomy1' or
              $field_name == 'taxonomy2' or
              $field_name == 'taxonomy3' ) ) { 

            $fields->$field_name = $this->link_to_local_taxonomy_terms( $fields->$field_name );

        }

        update_field( acf_get_field($field_name)['key'], $fields->$field_name, $ID );

    }
    return;
}

The main chunk of code for creating the rows and subrows for repeater fields:

function insert_local_repeater_fields( $repeater_row_name, $ID, $fields, $field_group_name ) {

        $local_repeater_name = $repeater_row_name;

        if ( $fields ) {

            for ( $i = 0; $i < sizeof($fields); $i++ ) {

                $row_data = array();

                foreach ( $this->field_conf[$field_group_name][$repeater_row_name] as $row_field ) {

                    if ( ! is_array($row_field) ) {
                        $local_row_field = $row_field;

                        if ( $fields[$i]->$row_field and $row_field == 'location' ) {
                            $fields[$i]->$row_field = $this->link_to_local_taxonomy_terms( $fields[$i]->$row_field );
                        }
                        $row_data[$local_row_field] = $fields[$i]->$row_field;
                    }
                }

                add_row(acf_get_field($local_repeater_name)['key'], $row_data, $ID);

                if ( $fields[$i]->cities ) {
                    foreach ( $fields[$i]->cities as $city) {

                        $sub_row_data = array();
                        foreach ( $this->field_conf[$field_group_name][$repeater_row_name]['cities'] as $sub_row_field ) {

                            $local_sub_row_field = $sub_row_field;

                            if ( $city->$sub_row_field and $sub_row_field == 'location' ) {
                                $city->$sub_row_field = $this->link_to_local_taxonomy_terms( $city->$sub_row_field );
                   
                            }
                            $sub_row_data[$local_sub_row_field] = $city->$sub_row_field;
                      
                        }
                        add_sub_row( array(acf_get_field($local_repeater_name)['key'], ($i + 1), 'cities'), $sub_row_data, $ID );

                    }
                }

            }
        }
    }

The problem is that the fields only show up when I manually update the post and run the sync again. I have tried a million things: using keys instead of fields etc, but still no luck.

Has anyone encountered the same problem and point me to a potential solution?

Many cheers, guys!