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Patrick Boehner
2,005 Pointsthe_filed vs. get_post_meta
I might already know the answer to this question but I am asking out of curiosity.
In the video the example demonstrates using the Custom Field plugin's custom function the_filed for displaying the data held in our custom fields. I am assuming this is for simplicity sake as well as it being the method recommended by the plugin developers. But I am wondering if there is any other reason to use that method.
I ask because it would seem to build in a lot of dependency in your theme on the plugin. If you disable the plugin then you start getting error. Is there a reason for using this function over the one wordpress already has for handling the display of custom metadata, get_post_meta?
So instead of using:
<p><?php the_field('description'); ?></p>
We could use:
<p><?php echo get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'description', true ); ?></p>
That way we could avoid errors if the plugin is ever deactivated or another system is used for handling custom metadata fields.
2 Answers
Patrick Boehner
2,005 PointsTo give a more full answer I found after looking at ACF's documentation. They recommend using there the_field() because different ACF fields have different formatting options which change their output. For this example, get_post_meta() will work given that the custom fields we are using in ACF don't really have any formatting options. In some custom fields those custom formatting options are needed and get_post_meta() wont output them as expected. There may be a way around that but I would need to do some more looking. If there is, i would still think thats the preferred method despite requiring more work, that way your custom metadata isn't reliant on the plugin. Otherwise Stanley's suggestion would let you solve for an errors but would still cutoff the output of your metadata.
I also forgot to escape the output in my example above.
Stanley Thijssen
22,831 PointsFor this plugin it's better to use the_field() function. You can add a conditional to only output code when the_field() function exists so you dont get any errors when the plugin is disabled.