Is there way to use custom validation on an advanced custom field? For example, I might not want a textfield to have a value that starts with certain prefix, or I might want a number field to have a value greater than 'x'. I might also want to run a regex against a value and return an error if it doesn't match.

Is there way to use custom validation on an advanced custom field? For example, I might not want a textfield to have a value that starts with certain prefix, or I might want a number field to have a value greater than 'x'. I might also want to run a regex against a value and return an error if it doesn't match.

• custom-field

• What is an advanced custom field exactly? – GhostToast Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 19:09
• 2 wordpress.stackexchange/questions/65889/… – Milo Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 19:12
• Another thought for client side validation would be to use something like the bassistance.de jQuery validation plugin and enqueue that for the admin section along with your own admin javascript file that defines the fields and types. – Jared Cobb Commented Sep 26, 2012 at 19:16

4 Answers 4

There is now, I just posted a plugin that I wrote to do validation for Advanced Custom Fields to the Wordpress repository. It lets you do server side validation using either PHP code or regex, jQuery masked inputs, as well as unique value settings.

http://wordpress/extend/plugins/validated-field-for-acf/

I did it by plugging into acf/pre_save_post. Using that, you can test the $_POST data. And if you don't like something, you can change $post_id to "error" when you return it. This will keep the form from processing since the post_id is not correct. You can also plug in to acf/save_post to make sure to unset the "return" or update messages from the form.

It is all a little complicated, but I will try to give a simplified example of what I used.

$submitted_fields = '';
$validation_errors = '';

add_filter( 'acf/pre_save_post', 'custom_validation' );
function custom_validation( $post_id )
{
    // Load the fields from $_POST
    if ( empty($_POST['fields']) || ! is_array($_POST['fields']) )
    {
        $validation_errors['empty'] = "One or more fields below are required";
    }
    else
    {
        foreach( $_POST['fields'] as $k => $v )
        {
            // get field
            $f = apply_filters('acf/load_field', false, $k );
            $f['value'] = $v;
            $submitted_fields[$f['name']] = $f;
        }
    }

    // Test stuff...
    if ( empty($submitted_fields['foo']) || 'bar' != $submitted_fields['foo'] )
    {
        $validation_errors['foo'] = "Foo did not equal bar";
    }

    // If there are errors, output them, keep the form from processing, and remove any redirect
    if ( $validation_errors )
    {
        // Output the messges area on the form
        add_filter( 'acf/get_post_id', array(__CLASS__, 'add_error') );
        // Turn the post_id into an error
        $post_id = 'error';
        // Add submitted values to fields
        add_action('acf/create_fields', array(__CLASS__, 'acf_create_fields'), 10, 2 );
    }
    else
    {
        // Do something... do nothing... ?
    }

    // return the new ID
    return $post_id;
}

    function acf_create_fields( $fields, $post_id )
    {
        foreach ( $fields as &$field )
        {
            if ( array_key_exists($field['name'], $submitted_fields) )
                $field['value'] = $submitted_fields[$field['name']];
        }
        return $fields;
    }

    function add_error()
    {
        echo '<div id="message" class="error">';
        foreach ( $validation_errors as $key => $error )
        {
            echo '<p class="' . $key . '">' . $error . '</p>';
        }
        echo '</div>';
    }

add_action('acf/save_post', 'custom_handle_error', 1);
function custom_handle_error( $post_id )
{
    if ( 'error' == $post_id )
    {
        unset($_POST['return']);
    }
}

This doesn't allow to highlight fields that returned an error, but you could actually do it pretty easily with javascript using the classes from the errors in #message div.

Since version 5.0, you can use the acf/validate_value filter - see the official documentation.

you can use this code

add_filter('acf/validate_value/name=validate_this_image', 'my_acf_validate_value', 10, 4);

function my_acf_validate_value( $valid, $value, $field, $input ){

// bail early if value is already invalid
if( !$valid ) {

    return $valid;

}


// load image data
$data = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $value, 'full' );
$width = $data[1];
$height = $data[2];

if( $width < 960 ) {

    $valid = 'Image must be at least 960px wide';

}


// return
return $valid;


}

result Documentation