Get a value from field containing json

Correction.

The white screen wasn’t a typical WordPress white screen. It was the result of a failure of javascript to fade out a white loader.

Here are the error messages I found under the white layer:

Warning: strpos() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given in /home/imagea8/public_html/msaanetwork/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 189

Catchable fatal error: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string in /home/imagea8/public_html/msaanetwork/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 197

Thank you for telling me about this condition. In the latest plugin update, I added a parameter to get values from an object stored in a field.

In the above case, this should display what you need:

[field pe_theme_meta property="position"]

This feature is untested right now. Could you tell me if it works?

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this.

That shortcode doesn’t work, but I’m not getting any errors. Just nothing.

For the record, I worked around this problem in the following way:

I installed Advanced Custom Fields and created a field for this post type and one other post type called ‘utility’. I set the field to appear in a panel on the edit screen.

In functions.php I enqueued a script that loads into Admin using the hook for post edit screens only:

function my_load_scripts($hook) {
	if( $hook != 'edit.php' && $hook != 'post.php' && $hook != 'post-new.php' )
		return;
	wp_enqueue_script( 'autofill-js', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/js/autofill_fields.js', array('jquery'), '1.0.0', true );
}
add_action('admin_enqueue_scripts', 'my_load_scripts');

The script ‘autofill_fields.js’ contains the following, which can probably be done more efficiently than this:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
       // determine which post type we're dealing with by identifying which field is present
	if (jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__position_').length > 0) {
		var pval = jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__position_').val();
	} else if (jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__type_').length > 0) {
		var pval = jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__type_').val();
	}
       // now copy the value of the relevant field to my 'utility' field
	jQuery('#acf-field-utility').val(pval);

        // If the field changes, change 'utility' along with it
	jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__position_').change(function(){
		var pval = jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__position_').val();
		jQuery('#acf-field-utility').val(pval);
	});

        // And this is the same for the other post type
	jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__type_').change(function(){
		var pval = jQuery('#pe_theme_meta_info__type_').val();
		jQuery('#acf-field-utility').val(pval);
	});
});

So now, whatever is in the Position field gets written to the utility field and I use
[field utility] to display that info.

Woo, that is quite a solution! I like that it’s automated for all applicable posts.

I see, so the new shortcode parameter didn’t do what I expected. It’s difficult to know how to extract the data from this field, since I can’t see or test it on my end. Probably what was needed was something like:

[field pe_theme_meta property="info->position"]

..but that functionality doesn’t exist yet, to access sub-levels of object properties.

Anyway, it seems to be specific to the theme and how it stores its data, so perhaps this function is not necessary. Looks like you’ve found a solution to get the data you need.

Thanks for your efforts, Eliot. JSON still confounds me, to be honest. It probably is too theme-specific in this case. Anyway, everything is still working fine, so we’re good.

Gonna mark this resolved.