Saving an array to Advanced Custom Fields WordPress

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I’m using the ACF plugin for WordPress. I’m posting to a custom post type programmatically via my theme. Now, I thought I would be able to save an array of items to a custom field quite easily, but whenever I try to, nothing gets input. I simply get this error when I check the post screen in the admin area:

Warning: htmlspecialchars() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/lukeseag/public_html/spidr-wp/wp-content/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/core/fields/text.php on line 127

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Now, I’m kind of throwing this out there for suggestions as to how I can go about solving this problem.

To give some context, I’m programmatically saving data input by a user, and creating a post with it. Much of the data is simple strings and numbers that can each have their own custom field.

But I have an unknown number of text strings and URL's (with an id number for each) coming through this page too, that need to be linked with the same post. I need to be able to output each set of text string and URL into their own div on the single.php post page. Now, ideally these text/url pairs would be saved in a single array so I can just loop through the array and output the data, but it looks like ACF doesn’t want to let this happen?

Any suggestions as to how I can save this data and then output it easily on the single.php page? Each set of results will have an ID (number), text string and url.

Thanks!

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2 comments

  1. This is exactly why all those "frameworks" are usually more pain than gain. they are designed to look flexible to the lazy but then they always prove useless on a real case scenario that is a bit more complex than anything that would actually be easily achieved without them.

    Anyhow, as for your question.

    The problem is that you are passing array instead of a string .
    I am not going to go into debugging the plugin, and anyhow , more code and info is needed , so i will just give you ONE possible and easy solution, and that is to compose a pseudo-array string like so :

    'ID|URL|STRING'

    note that the delimiter pipe (|) is just an example, you could use ( , ) ( : ) ( # ) or whatever.

    in other words :

    $url = 'http://myurl.url/something';
$id = 35;
$string = 'my string';

$pseudo_r = $id . '|' . $url .  '|' . $string . '|'; // results in 'ID|URL|STRING';

    or you can use the implode() function

     $pseudo_r = array(
       "url" => $url,
       "id" => $id ,
       "string" => $string
       );

$pseudo_r = implode("|", $pseudo_r); // gives a string

    and pass it as a string that later on you can decompose it with explode() like so :

    $pseudo_r = explode( '|', $pseudo_r ); // gives back the original array

    ( Please note that now the array is NON ASSOCIATIVE anymore . )

    now, since you mentioned that each one of those is a set, you can compose the same pseudo array from the sets, using a different delimiter.

    This might work for you , but essentially it is wrong .

    why is it wrong ?

    Because this is a generic and somewhat hackish solution that actually ignores your data type .
    You are mixing 3 types of data types , URL , ID and a STRING .
    All 3 ( should ) have potentially different validation schemes , and I suspect that the htmlspecialchars() part belong to the URL.

    Another solution is just to find the right data field in the ACF settings or use a different field for each and then just DISPLAY it together , also using the implode() and explode() functions.