update repeater field on acf/save_post

• jab1000

• April 16, 2015 at 7:43 am

We have a custom post type that has several fields that are created with ACF. We also have a couple of different “repeaters” (sub-fields) on it as well. One of the repeaters is the location’s address information and we need to do geolocation first and then update the lat/long field.

I am able to loop through the submitted form data but so far I haven’t yet found the way to get the repeater’s “updated form field” into the database yet.

Here is my existing code in functions.php:

function post_updating_callback($post_id){
	
	// Ensure we have ACF fields on the post.
	if( empty($_POST['acf']) ) { return; }

	$locations = $_POST['acf']['field_55282e0aa0a6f'];

	// get address info to do geolocation

	foreach ($locations as $key => $subValue) {
		// sample field update
		$locations[$key]['field_552b2a87ecdbc'] = 'postSave '.$key;
		
		// or even this way
		$subValue['field_552b2a87ecdbc'] = 'postSave '.$key;

		// different attempts to save it
		// update_sub_field($locations[$key]['field_552b2a87ecdbc'], 'postSave '.$key);
		// update_field('field_552b2a87ecdbc', 'postSave {$key}', $post_id);
		// update_sub_field('field_552b2a87ecdbc', 'postSave {$key}', $post_id);
	}

	return;
}
add_action('acf/save_post', 'post_updating_callback', 20);

I also tried to use the have_rows() like:

if( have_rows($locations) ) {
	$i = 0;
	echo 'have rows!';

	while( have_rows($locations) ) {
		echo 'inside while;';
	}
}

The have_rows() only throws errors for me as well — maybe supposed to only be used on the front-end versus on in the functions.php file?

Thoughts or ideas?

Thanks,
Jeremy

• John Huebner

• June 1, 2015 at 6:46 am

Usually, when I’m doing something like this with repeater fields I don’t actually use ACF functions or try to work directly with the values in $_POST.

Here’s an example of something I’d do, I do this because I know how ACF stores data and it’s just easier and faster to work with native WP functions for me.

post_updating_callback($post_id) {
  $repeater = 'my_repeater'; // the field name of the repeater field
  $subfield1 = 'subfield_1'; // the field I want to get
  $subfield2 = 'subfield_2'; // the field I want to set
  
  // get the number of rows in the repeater
  $count = intval(get_post_meta($post_id, $repeater, true);
  // loop through the rows
  for (i=0; $i<$count; $i++) {
    $get_field = $repeater.'_'.$i.'_'.$subfield1;
    $set_field = $repeater.'_'.$i.'_'.$subfield2;
    $value = get_post_meta($post_id, $get_field, true);
    // do whatever I need to calculate the value to set
    // $new_value will hold the value to set
    update_post_meta($post_id, $set_field, $new_value);
  }
}

Hope this helps.

• Twansparant

• June 26, 2015 at 7:47 pm

@John Huebner:
Thanks for your code! This works great, however there were 2 minor syntax errors in your code. Updated code:

function post_updating_callback( $post_id ) {
  $repeater  = 'page_sections'; // the field name of the repeater field
  $subfield1 = 'page_section_title'; // the field I want to get
  $subfield2 = 'page_section_slug'; // the field I want to set
  // get the number of rows in the repeater
  $count = intval(get_post_meta($post_id, $repeater, true));
  // loop through the rows
  for ($i=0; $i<$count; $i++) {
    $get_field = $repeater.'_'.$i.'_'.$subfield1;
    $set_field = $repeater.'_'.$i.'_'.$subfield2;
    $value     = get_post_meta($post_id, $get_field, true);
    $new_value = sanitize_title($value);
    update_post_meta($post_id, $set_field, $new_value);
  }
}
add_action('acf/save_post', 'post_updating_callback', 20);

Thanks a lot!