Beta 3: Layout Builder ACF

[urchindesign]

I’m still having an issue with Beta 3 and ACF fields.

The ACF fields are not detected so you need to remember and manually add the field key.

I have a custom post type called attorney, I have created various acf fields for the attorney post type and create an attorney.

In the layout builder I have done the following:

• Created a condition - Post Type is Attorney
• With the Preview Switcher I set the preview to be an Attorney and then selected my sample attorney.
• Create a text field -> click dynamic -> gone to ACF it says loading and then just asks for a key rather than showing the ACF options for the custom post type.

Just for some more info my test site is:

• WordPress 5.5.1
• Pro 4 Beta3
• ACF Pro 5.9.1, Custom Post Type UI 1.8.1, WooCommerce 4.5.2
• PHP7.4.11, 10.1.40-MariaDB
• Google Chrome 86.0.4240.75

No other plugins.

[alexander]

Hi @urchindesign

I’m sorry for the delay here. Been a busy week getting the archive builder merged, reconciling some other issues and getting ready for the next beta. I want to acknowledge receipt of this and I’ll take a closer look next week.

[alexander]

Beta 4: ACF Fields still not being found

After all the looper/consumer changes, I don’t have a natural way to predict the context and get the appropriate fields in that UI. I used to be able to just use the current post ID when in the content builder, but it’s more complicated now… For example, it should actually change based on the “current post” which can now be different at a moments notice if you’re working with WordPress queries. I’ll need to build something more robust to address this which will take some more time. Regretfully, …

[urchindesign]

I hear what you are saying. I also understand it is going to something that will be time consuming to perfect but this is still very problematic in Beta 11…

Ideally, if you can at least pick the fields in a similar way as Pro 3 and then if all the fields are not detected and we need one that isn’t detected we can go to our ACF set up and choose the field and paste it in.

Never ever finding any ACF fields really slows down the building of pages.

[Maratopia_Digital]

Hey @urchindesign,

I have noticed this as well and did find it slightly awkward having to find the ACF key but after looking a bit more into the dynamic field options I was able to find where the ACF custom fields are located. Below is a screenshot of where I found my ACF custom field.

Meta(Custom Field)

These 2 were ACF fields that I’ve put on an interactive map page idea I had and it worked perfectly. It’s a bit mixed up with a bunch of other dynamic fields but at least it’s easier to find than having to remember the Key.

One thing to bare in mind is that agency_city would actually give me the dynamic content and the _agency_city = ACF Key.

Hope this helps.

[urchindesign]

Cool. Thanks for that it is really helpful for now. I honestly I have not delved in that deep yet…

in the beginning I did a fair amount of testing and playing around but unfortunately most of the stuff I was interested in seemed plagued with issues and every time I’ve started testing I’ve run into issues almost immediately. In the past, with Pro 2 & Pro 3 I have built new sites with the beta’s so managed to play much more during the beta phases.

I’m busy with two builds that are really suited to all the new loopers and conditionals. The new Pro would have saved a lot of time … at the moment I just can’t afford to build these sites with the beta with where it is at the moment as they still don’t feel ready. I’m also getting beta fatigue.

Anyway this one is a beast and the features will be amazing once all the issues are ironed out. It has also been awesome that the team have listened a lot through the process and added some amazing additional features.

I can’t wait to build a few new sites with the new Pro and really delve into everything properly.

[alexander]

Thanks @urchindesign and @Maratopia_Digital I totally get where you’re coming from.

We’re going to be adding Looper Providers for ACF repeater fields and nested repeaters at which point we will need a way to scope the enumerated fields even more (just to that provided context) so I’ll have to do some more exploration in this area and hopefully we can get a more helpful experience.

[urchindesign]

Sorry I’m back to this one.

I know at some point we discussed optional ACF items…

Essentially it comes down to build a layout with ACF fields where some fields are option. I had mentioned not showing the image / button or whatever if the ACF field was empty.

At the time you mentioned this wasn’t a good idea as there could be use cases where a person wants show something even though the ACF field was empty.

At the time I think you mentioned adding a conditional so that we could set when to show the button / image or whatever item it might be based on an optional ACF field.

Perhaps I am missing something but I still can’t figure out how to not show an optional ACF item if the user hasn’t added something to the field.

So by example I have a button to download a brochure. There is an upload in an optional ACF field in the CPT. If the person does not upload a brochure I don’t want the button to show.

My understanding was this would be possible in the conditionals.

Is this possible? I am just missing something? Or did you never manage to do this?

[alexander]

@urchindesign

At the time I think you mentioned adding a conditional so that we could set when to show the button / image or whatever item it might be based on an optional ACF field.

I’m sorry, we don’t have anything in for this yet. We need to add some more conditional rules based on content being present in strings have decided to do another wave of conditional logic updates at a later time. I’m not sure yet when that will slot in. There are a bunch of things we are planning on doing with ACF like supporting the repeater field so we do intend to get this in but regretfully not in the Pro 4.0.0 release.

[urchindesign]

Pro 4 is amazing. The more I work on it the more I like it. With RC 1 I have finally converted a site that’s in development and its been a dream to sort out some stuff that would have usually been a few hours of custom code.

It is a real pity to miss this feature though. Nearly every CPT with custom layouts I build has optional elements.

Hopefully you’ll add this straight away in Pro4.1…

[alexander]

Thanks! Really glad it’s working well for you. Better ACF compatibility is definitely a priority moving forward and I’m sure we’ll get even more feedback of use cases when the official release goes live. I’m not sure how/when we want to prioritize it in terms of another release just yet.

[urchindesign]

I know I keep coming back to this but busy on my first two builds with Pro 4… Both of them have optional download buttons on custom taxonomies. Now the posts that don’t have a download sit with download buttons that don’t do anything. For me it is critical to have some way of not showing a button if the link is empty.

[alexander]

I understand. I’m sorry, it’s just not going to be in 4.0 at this point. We’ll definitely be coming back to it sooner vs later as there’s a whole bunch of feedback on conditions and loopers.

[urchindesign]

Thanks for the feedback.

Hopefully now that this massive update is almost done we can do a few short incremental updates and get these things ironed out.

Not trying to be critical as the update is awesome. The more I use it the better and it has save massive amounts of time on both the new builds. Both builds also have mini memberships of sorts and with conditionals I haven’t needed to use a bloated membership plugin as conditionals meet the needs of both the sites.

[spedney]

Thanks for such a great update. I agree that improved conditionals is going to be a big help and I really hope it can be prioritised really soon.

I’m back to using custom short-codes to conditionally display global blocks for some of the necessary functionality right now, and while it works ok, it’s a bit of a workaround.

[alexander]

Thanks @urchindesign and @spedney!

We haven’t charted the course in detail for the next development cycle but I agree this one is pretty important. There’s a number of use cases we’d like to support in addition to having more ACF integration.