The ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) gallery field is a powerful tool for creating image galleries in WordPress. By default, the images in the gallery field are displayed in the order they were added. However, there may be cases where you want to customize the image ordering based on specific criteria.
To achieve this, you can use the wpsnippets_acf_gallery_order filter hook provided by ACF. This filter allows you to modify the order of images in the gallery field before they are displayed.
Here’s an example code snippet that demonstrates how to use the wpsnippets_acf_gallery_order filter to order images in the ACF gallery field based on the image title:
function wpsnippets_custom_acf_gallery_order( $attachments, $post_id, $field ) {
// Sort the attachments array based on image title
usort( $attachments, function( $a, $b ) {
return strcmp( $a['title'], $b['title'] );
} );
return $attachments;
}
add_filter( 'wpsnippets_acf_gallery_order', 'wpsnippets_custom_acf_gallery_order', 10, 3 );
In this code snippet, we define a custom function wpsnippets_custom_acf_gallery_order that accepts three parameters: $attachments, $post_id, and $field. The $attachments parameter contains an array of all the images in the gallery field, while $post_id and $field represent the current post ID and ACF field object, respectively.
Inside the function, we use the usort function to sort the $attachments array based on the image title. The usort function takes a comparison function as a parameter, which compares the titles of two images using the strcmp function.
Finally, we return the sorted $attachments array, which will be used to display the images in the ACF gallery field.
By modifying the sorting logic within the wpsnippets_custom_acf_gallery_order function, you can order the images based on different criteria such as image date, image size, or any other custom field associated with the image.
This code snippet can be useful in scenarios where you want to display the images in the ACF gallery field in a specific order, such as alphabetical order, chronological order, or any other custom order based on your requirements.
Examples
Example 1: Reorder images in ACF gallery field programmatically
This example demonstrates how to programmatically reorder the images in an ACF gallery field using the update_field() function from the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin.
$gallery_images = get_field('gallery_field'); // Get the current gallery images
$new_order = array(2, 1, 3); // Define the desired order of the images
update_field('gallery_field', $new_order, $post_id); // Update the gallery field with the new order
In this example, we first retrieve the current images from the ACF gallery field using the get_field() function. Then, we define a new order for the images by creating an array with the desired order. Finally, we use the update_field() function to update the gallery field with the new order.
Example 2: Display ACF gallery images in a custom order
This example demonstrates how to display the images from an ACF gallery field in a custom order using the get_field() function and a custom loop.
$gallery_images = get_field('gallery_field'); // Get the gallery images
$new_order = array(2, 1, 3); // Define the desired order of the images
foreach ($new_order as $image_id) {
$image = wp_get_attachment_image($image_id, 'thumbnail'); // Get the image HTML
echo $image; // Output the image
}
In this example, we first retrieve the images from the ACF gallery field using the get_field() function. Then, we define a new order for the images by creating an array with the desired order. Next, we loop through the new order array and use the wp_get_attachment_image() function to get the HTML for each image. Finally, we output the image HTML using echo.
Example 3: Sort ACF gallery images alphabetically
This example demonstrates how to sort the images in an ACF gallery field alphabetically using the get_field() function and the usort() function.
$gallery_images = get_field('gallery_field'); // Get the gallery images
usort($gallery_images, function($a, $b) {
return strcmp($a['title'], $b['title']); // Sort images by title
});
foreach ($gallery_images as $image) {
$image_html = wp_get_attachment_image($image['id'], 'thumbnail'); // Get the image HTML
echo $image_html; // Output the image
}
In this example, we first retrieve the images from the ACF gallery field using the get_field() function. Then, we use the usort() function to sort the images based on their title. Inside the usort() function, we use strcmp() to compare the titles of two images. Finally, we loop through the sorted images and use wp_get_attachment_image() to get the HTML for each image, which is then outputted using echo.