ACF Flexible Content Field Type: Complete Guide

The ACF Flexible Content Field lets you add an unlimited number of layouts and sub-fields to populate your posts & pages with Content in a structured manner. It acts as a Repeater that can have multiple layouts in each row. The flexible content field is there to provide you with a simple and clean-looking interface for your structured block-based editor.

 How To Create ACF Flexible Content Field ?  

The steps below will guide you towards creating Flexible Content field layouts for your WordPress site.

Checkout: How To Display Data Form ACF Flexible Content In Elementor?

Step 1: Create Flexible Content Field

Start with creating a field group if not created yet, and then add a new field and set its type to Flexible Content.

ACF Flexible Content 1

Step 2: Create Layouts under the ACF Flexible Content Field Type.  

Under the ACF flexible content field type, you can add any number of layouts, each with its own set of fields.

ACF Flexible Content 2

For example, as you can see in the above screenshot, the flexible content field (Flex Content) contains two layouts (Hero & Section), each containing its own subfields.

Step 3: Additional Settings   

After adding layouts to the Flexible Content Field, you can configure a few additional settings related to how it appears when viewed in the Admin area.

ACF Flexible Content 3
  • Button Label: The text is shown in the ‘Add Row’ button.
  • Minimum Layouts: Sets a limit on how many layouts are required.
  • Maximum Layouts: Sets a limit on how many layouts are allowed.

Step 4: Location Settings  

Lastly, specify the location where you want to apply the flexible content field; if you have already assigned a location, you can skip this process.

ACF flexible content 4

 Template usage   

The ACF Flexible Content field returns a multi-dimensional array containing the layouts and their sub-field values.

Accessing the value is done via the have_rows, the_row, get_sub_field, and the_sub_field functions.

 Loop example   

This example demonstrates how to loop over an ACF Flexible Content field value and access subfields from different layouts.

<?php

// Check value exists.
if( have_rows('content') ):

    // Loop through rows.
    while ( have_rows('content') ) : the_row();

        // Case: Paragraph layout.
        if( get_row_layout() == 'paragraph' ):
            $text = get_sub_field('text');
            // Do something...

        // Case: Download layout.
        elseif( get_row_layout() == 'download' ): 
            $file = get_sub_field('file');
            // Do something...

        endif;

    // End loop.
    endwhile;

// No value.
else :
    // Do something...
endif;

 Display layouts   

This example demonstrates how to loop through a Flexible Content field and generate HTML for different layouts.

<?php if( have_rows('content') ): ?>
    <?php while( have_rows('content') ): the_row(); ?>
        <?php if( get_row_layout() == 'paragraph' ): ?>
            <?php the_sub_field('paragraph'); ?>
        <?php elseif( get_row_layout() == 'image' ): 
            $image = get_sub_field('image');
            ?>
            <figure>
                <?php echo wp_get_attachment_image( $image['ID'], 'full' ); ?>
                <figcaption><?php echo $image['caption']; ?></figcaption>
            </figure>
        <?php endif; ?>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

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