Compatibility with ACF acf_form() method

Hi badlydrawnben,
Thanks for your message.

Are you using the latest version of ACF, BNFW, and WP?
There was a problem with this as seen on this support thread but was fixed several months ago.

Let me know.

Thanks,
Jack

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your quick reply.

I am using latest version of WP and the relevant plugins. The poster in that other support thread did seem to have the notifications working when creating a CPT via an ACF front-end form. It’s not working in my case though.

His was set to create the posts as ‘pending’ status. I have tried that as well as ‘new’ and ‘published’ but the notifications don’t trigger. I have notifications triggered for New posts and post updates. Neither is working though. If I create a new post in the ‘back end’ (the WP dashboard) then I do get the notification email.

I have tried it both with and without the bnfw_insert_post_themes function in my functions.php file.

There is a hook in the acf_form() functionality called ‘acf/save_post’. If I manually code in a test wp_mail function hooked into there, then that does send me the test email. I want to be able to customise the notifications in the WP dashboard though.

Sorry – I’m sure that’s not much to go on, but I’m reporting it here in case a solution may become apparent in time.

Thanks,
Ben

Hi badlydrawnben,
It does sound like a conflict, possibly with a theme or another plugin somewhere as I know ACF works quite well with BNFW.

Are you able to work your way through this support document and let me know how you get on?

Thanks,
Jack

Hi Jack,

I have tried to pare it back to the most basic setup – so only the ACF, email log and BNFW plugins activated, and using the 2016 theme out of the box (with and without that functions.php snippet in your Support Docs).

I am also trying the most basic version of the ACF form setup using this tutorial https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/using-acf_form-to-create-a-new-post/ (the first page-new-post.php file).

That creates a new Post and saves it fine. Still no notification though.

Do you have ACF installed on any of your test sites? If so, could you try this as a page template and see if it triggers a notification for ‘New Post creation’

<?php 

acf_form_head();

get_header();

?>
<div id="content">

	<?php

	acf_form(array(
		'post_id'		=> 'new_post',
		'post_title'	=> true,
		'post_content'	=> true,
	));

	?>

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Thanks,
Ben

Hi badlydrawnben,

The filter is only for themes with front-end forms – it won’t affect plugins which is why it’s not working for you.

I’ve done some testing and I can’t get it to work anymore either. It looks like a change in ACF has stopped it from working to me.

I’m marking this as a bug and will look to implement a fix in the next release.

Thanks,
Jack

Hi badlydrawnben,
Can you try this filter in your functions.php file and let me know how you get on?

add_filter( ‘bnfw_trigger_insert_post’, ‘__return_true’ );

Thanks,
Jack

Hi Jack,

No luck with that I’m afraid. I tried it just in functions.php and also in the custom page template that has all the front-end-ACF post creation stuff in. I put in this hook, but I’m not sure that’s the right place for it to go?

...other code
add_filter('acf/pre_save_post' , 'bb_do_pre_save_post' );
function bb_do_pre_save_post( $post_id ) {
	// Bail if not logged in or not able to post
	if ( ! ( is_user_logged_in() || current_user_can('publish_posts') ) ) {
		return;
	}
	// check if this is to be a new post
	if( $post_id != 'new' ) {
		return $post_id;
	}
	// Create a new post
	$post = array(
		'post_type'     => 'sponsorship', // Your post type ( post, page, custom post type )
		'post_status'   => 'publish', // (publish, draft, private, etc.)
		'post_title'    => wp_strip_all_tags($_POST['acf']['field_xxxxxxxxxxxx']), // Post Title ACF field key
		'post_content'  => $_POST['acf']['field_xxxxxxxx'], // Post Content ACF field key
	);
	// insert the post
	$post_id = wp_insert_post( $post );
	// Get Better Notifications plugin to work when New sponsorship page created
	add_filter( 'bnfw_trigger_insert_post', '__return_true' );
	// Save the fields to the post
	do_action( 'acf/save_post' , $post_id );
	return $post_id;
}

Hi badlydrawnben,
You may need to re-format the quote marks in my previous reply as they look like they’ve been pasted in incorrectly.

I would resort to using the latest version of all of these (non-modified): BNFW, ACF (Free or Pro), and WordPress and then trying again with the re-formatted above filter, if possible.

Can you also try with the twentysixteen theme and any other plugins disabled to rule out the possibility of a conflict?

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks,
Jack

After investigating this further, it would appear that a recent change to ACF has stopped this from working as it’s using a non-WordPress standard way of inserting the posts into the database. Unless this works in a more ‘official’ way, I won’t be able to provide support for ACF front-end forms in the BNFW core plugin unfortunately due to the complexity of a fix.

Apologies it’s not good news but hopefully you understand the situation.

Thanks and I hope you continue to use BNFW.

Thanks,
Jack

Hi Jack,

Just a quick update on this – I got the email notifications working ‘out of the box’ with ACF front-end user submissions via this plugin https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/post-status-notifier-lite

I’m nowhere near smart enough to know how/why that one worked. I’m just posting it as a reference here in case you ever needed to revisit the ACF problem again in the future.

Thanks,
Ben

Hi badlydrawnben,
Thanks for following-up.

That’s interesting. What before and after statuses did you choose for it to work?

Thanks,
Jack

Hi Jack,

At the moment I’m just using ‘Not published’ for Before and ‘Published’ for After. Seems to work OK.

Thanks,
Ben

Hi Ben,
Ah, that sounds like how it’s working as there isn’t a post status associated with it.

Thanks for letting me know.
Jack