using the_field() in functions.php?

• chanshaw

• April 21, 2015 at 4:47 pm

I’m trying to get this to work in functions.php but it doesn’t want to work at all. I just need the function to get all the field ‘order_number’ values in an array and then use the max function on the array.

function load_highest_order_number()
{
	$category7 = query_posts('meta_key=order_number&cat=7');
	while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); 
		echo the_field('order_number');
	endwhile;
	wp_reset_query();
	return max($array);
}

• James

• April 21, 2015 at 5:29 pm

Hi @chanshaw

To use a template function e.g. the_field(…) in function.php, you have to add a second parameter; the $post_id which tells ACF from where to grab the values from.

Try this:

function load_highest_order_number()
{
	$category7 = query_posts('meta_key=order_number&cat=7');
	while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); 
		echo get_field('order_number', get_the_ID());
	endwhile;
	wp_reset_query();
	return max($array);
}

Check out the following links for more information:
http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/get_field/
http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/the_field/

Hope this helps 🙂

• chanshaw

• April 21, 2015 at 10:14 pm

Hi James, thank you for the reply, I’ve been trying to figure this out for some time now. It seems when I use this code I get an unlimited loop. get_field does not seem to work for me in functions.php

• chanshaw

• April 21, 2015 at 10:46 pm

here is the rest of the code thats in my functions.php, maybe thats the problem

function load_highest_order_number()
{
	$category7 = query_posts('meta_key=order_number&cat=7');
	while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); 
		echo get_field('order_number', get_the_ID());
	endwhile;
	wp_reset_query();
	return max($array);
}

function my_acf_load_field( $field )
{
	$field['default_value'] = "Number Calculated: " . load_highest_order_number();	
	return $field;
}

add_filter('acf/load_field/name=order_number', 'my_acf_load_field');

• chanshaw

• April 23, 2015 at 2:12 pm

@acf-support

I’m not sure if I had to tag you in order for you to see this?

• James

• April 24, 2015 at 12:39 am

Hi @chanshaw

Hmm… Please change the method query_posts() and use get_posts() instead and change your code to the following:

function load_highest_order_number() {
	$args = array(
		'meta_key' 	=> 'order_number',
		'cat'		=> 7);

	$posts = get_posts($args);
	foreach ($posts as $post):
		echo get_field('order_number', $post->ID);
	endforeach;
	... // 
}

Have a look at the documentation of get_posts() and query_posts() for more information on this. Here are the links:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts
https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts