update_field only works if followed by exit;

• mleeman

• March 10, 2021 at 2:21 am

Hi,

Strange one here that’s probably something simple but I’ve been looking at it too long, hopefully fresh eyes can spot it.

I have a repeater field that contains a date and a text field, and I’m trying to add a new row when the status of the post changes:

function check_custom_status_change( $new, $old, $post ) {
        $actions = get_field( 'history', $post->ID);
        $actions[] = array(
            'date' => date('F j, Y g:i a'),
            'action' => 'Status changed '.$old.' to '.$new
        );
        update_field( 'history', $actions, $post->ID );
}
add_action( 'transition_post_status', 'check_custom_status_change', 20, 3 );

The above code fails to add a new row .. however simply exiting the code after the update_field works as expected:

function check_custom_status_change( $new, $old, $post ) {
        $actions = get_field( 'history', $post->ID);
        $actions[] = array(
            'date' => date('F j, Y g:i a'),
            'action' => 'Status changed '.$old.' to '.$new
        );
        update_field( 'history', $actions, $post->ID );
        exit;
}
add_action( 'transition_post_status', 'check_custom_status_change', 20, 3 );

Am I missing something obvious here? Thanks in advance.

• John Huebner

• March 10, 2021 at 6:18 am

That’s odd. If you don’t do the exit and you reload the page again after the save does the repeater show the newly added row?

• mleeman

• March 10, 2021 at 5:54 pm

No, the new row doesn’t show and there’s is no new entry in the wp_postmeta table for that post_id. I’ve even tried to simplify the code by using add_row and the effect is the same:

$row = array(
            'date' => date('F j, Y g:i a'),
            'action' => 'Status changed '.$old.' to '.$new
        );
        $new_row_count = add_row( 'history', $row, $post->ID );

The above fails to add the new row (and no new entry in the database) whereas:

$row = array(
            'date' => date('F j, Y g:i a'),
            'action' => 'Status changed '.$old.' to '.$new
        );
        $new_row_count = add_row( 'history', $row, $post->ID );
        var_dump( $new_row_count );
        exit;

does add the new entry as expected (and is added ok to the wp_postmeta table) and the $new_row_count is as expected.

I’ll continue to debug by stepping into the ACF core and adding die() points to see if I can pin down exactly where it’s going wrong.

*Update* I think this is all down to me trying to add a new repeater row when the post status changes and WordPress does that in an Ajax request. I think the simplest solution is just to maintain a separate ACF ‘Status’ field which will also have the benefit of allowing me more statuses 😉

• John Huebner

• March 10, 2021 at 11:28 pm

I was curious about it being during an ajax action. I would say that some of the actions in WP are not being fired.