ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) support

Beaver Builder
1

I know this is more for a niche of developers and advanced designers, but maybe a shortcode solution could do it. I’d love to be able to create custom fields and being able pull the client-entered information from the backend to the beaver builder by adding a shortcode to a text/html element or a widget. I know ACF can be used on the front end http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/create-a-front-end-form/

Also it’d be absolutely sick if I could create custom modules using ACF, even if at first you still need to have the user enter the information in the back end (page settings dashborad) but have it reflected on the front end. The repeater and flexible fields are so powerful it’d open so many possibilities for us.

Please let me know if this is something you guys are considering

2

Hey there Carlos. I’m not part of the BB team but at our office we had the same dilemma, we were so used to using custom fields in the backend we weren’t sure how to really utilize BB. At one point we had custom fields in the backend and custom modules to display the custom fields in the frontend editor. The problem with this is that our end clients were confused about which editor to go to for certain information, and I can’t blame them.

What I would suggest is reading over the custom module docs and try to transition away from ACF to custom BB modules which should be able to accomplish the same thing as ACF, but in the frontend editor.

Is there something specific you think ACF can do that BB modules cannot?

3

Hey guys,

I’ve assigned another member of the team to chime in with you. :slight_smile:

Ben

4

Hey Carlos,

We do have plans to build in some sort of post meta support in the future, but no ETA on that yet. When we do, that should open up the possibility to pull in AFC data, but I’m not sure what that will look like yet.

I agree with Josh, have a look at the custom module docs. Let me know if you have any questions about that.

Justin

5

Thank you Josh for the insight of your own experience and I have to say you got a really good point there, I have overlooked the custom module documentation but I will get more deep into it for sure. The only reason I wanted ACF to be supported is because I am building a multisite setup and nobody but me would have the ability to create custom modules, and the ones I create would be global which is an amazing feature, but if theres a tool they can use like ACF that only takes effect on the site they’re working on, it’d be absolutely freeing. Just so you know. There’s a few ACF features that are extremely helpful like the “Repeater”, “Flexible Field”, “User Field” just to mention a few of them.

Thank you Ben and Justin for always bring us strong support and customer service. Looking forward to seeing the post meta support in the future.

6

If I’m understanding you correctly, you would like to create custom modules using an interface in wp-admin, correct? That’s a pretty slick idea! The problem, as I see it, would be creating the custom CSS, JS, and HTML for these modules.

By making these as BB modules, it allows you to package up everything and reuse it, as long as you add dynamic options.

As for the ACF fields:

  • BB also has a repeater field tho ACF does give you a bit more control with limits
  • Flexible field -- BB allows toggling of fields based on user input, which is pretty close
  • User field -- does that mean a list of wp users? You could always create a custom field
7

Beaver Builder modules don’t need to be complicated and work using standard WordPress code. You could create your ACF stuff in the backend and the build a simple module that pulls in that data to the frontend. Just a thought.

8

Understood! Thank you guys!

BB is hands down the best Wordpress Builder out there because it attracts more advanced designers that are trying to use it to develop more complex and profesional sites in a much more practical way :slight_smile: thats why like I mentioned in a another threat I opened, being able to design the Header, the Footer, Sidebar, modules and custom post type templates using the BB interface can completely make it independent from the use of the typical (old fashion) templates.

9

I seem to land on this thread a lot when Googling [beaver builder ACF]. The custom modules documentation looks fascinating and I will definitely explore it.

Just so as I’m not reinventing the wheel, I was wondering whether there have been any developments in the past 7 months around where this topic left off. Namely, a BB fields module with an interface for managing the fields in wp-admin (assuming I understood the gist of the topic correctly…)

Is there such a thing? Or a quick route to building it? Not that the documentation looks at all difficult, but I’m on a job deadline. I reckon I could easily manage hard-coding the fields into a module, but it would be great if I could present my client with a code-free way of managing fields so they can, in turn, employ someone to content-manage the website via a hybrid of WYSIWYG and CMS.

(ps. is there a BB module shop out there?)

10

Hi Simon,

Just so as I’m not reinventing the wheel, I was wondering whether there have been any developments in the past 7 months around where this topic left off.

Yes, that is the data providers card on our public roadmap. That is still in the conceptual stages, but the plan there is to make any field be able to receive dynamic values from things like the post title, content, featured image, or custom meta.

Is there such a thing? Or a quick route to building it?

Not currently, but you could output ACF values in a module’s frontend.php file.

(ps. is there a BB module shop out there?)

Yep! Beaver Lodge has quite a few additional modules.

Justin

11
Not currently, but you could output ACF values in a module’s frontend.php file.

Is there any documentation about this? Or could you please elaborate on it? I am very interested!

12

Thanks Justin,

I’ll look into ACF in frontend.php

In the meantime I had some success building a shortcode to render ACF repeater fields:

//* Property Details Shortcode
function property_details() {
    ob_start(); ?>
	<div class="info descriptionBlock">
	<?php if(get_field('property_details')):
	while(has_sub_field('property_details')):
		$field_name = get_sub_field('field_name');
		$field_val  = get_sub_field('field_value'); 
		if( $field_name && $field_val ) { ?>
		<div class="fieldHolder">
			<span class="fieldTitle">
			<?php the_sub_field('field_name'); ?>
			</span>
			<span class="fieldDescription">
			<?php the_sub_field('field_value'); ?>
			</span>
		</div>
		<?php }
	endwhile;
	endif; ?>
	</div>
	<?php return ob_get_clean();
}
add_shortcode( 'property-details', 'property_details' );

Then I put [property-details] into a Text Editor module. It seems buffering the output was necessary to get the fields to render inside the fl-rich-text div, otherwise they were outputting to entry-content* before the BB divs.

Do you think this solution could work?
Any possible shortcomings?

Thanks

  • I’ll be building a new template in any case, so entry-content is temporary for now.
13
Is there any documentation about this? Or could you please elaborate on it? I am very interested!

We don’t have docs for it because it’s standard ACF stuff. For example, you could use their the_field or get_field functions within your module’s frontend.php file to output ACF values for the current post/page. Does that make sense?

Do you think this solution could work?

I’m not quite sure why the other way would be rendering outside of the builder’s div, but this looks like an acceptable solution to me.

Justin

14

Great : ) Thanks Justin

15

I use ACF for many of my more complex custom themes. It’s something that can’t be replaced IMHO. I found this video tutorial on how to use it with BB. Done by Robert Monroe Turner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDb1BZpR-eY

16

Thank you all for your help!!! Mark, this is a great tutorial! The PHP widget opens up a whole new set of options!!!