Yes indeed, not a bad solution!
In my personal case, I’ve decided to work around the ugly field keys by defining consts for all fields, grouped in classes which matches my post types.
Basically, I have created classes with consts for each field. As I code in Netbeans, my solution has the added benefit of auto-completion for the ACF-fields. I find the added coding overhead is quite small with my solution, although there obviously is an overhead.
class CAR {
// Car - Base information
const REGISTRATION_NUMBER = "field_51a66ab4a253c";
const MAKE = "field_51a66a92a2539";
const MODEL = "field_51a66a9aa253a";
const MODEL_YEAR = "field_51a66a9fa253b";
// Car - Geographical details
const ADDRESS = "field_51a66dc064cbb";
const POSTAL = "field_51a66dcd64cbd";
const CITY = "field_51a66dc664cbc";
const COUNTRY = "field_51a66dd664cbe";
const GEOLOCATION = "field_51e1d1afb965c";
// ... more fields ...
}
class USER {
// User
const AVATAR_URL = "field_51e306ce37798";
const FACEBOOK_USER_ID = "field_51e3070737799";
const NEWSLETTER = "field_51e47ad26a7a6";
}
So when I want to update or get a field, I now do:
update_field(CAR::REGISTRATION_NUMBER, $registration_number, $postID);
It works quite well for me. Nonetheless, I stand by the feature request. I would have preferred simply having to write the following and not worry about extra classes and consts:
update_field('registration_number', $registration_number, $postID);
