ACF Chat Fridays give the Advanced Custom Fields community a chance to hear directly from the team behind the plugin. In our latest session, Matt Shaw walked through the powerful new ACF Data Store feature introduced in ACF 6.8.1, demonstrated how it unlocks real-time synchronization with the Gutenberg editor, and highlighted recent security and maintenance updates.

Hosted by Matt Shaw and Erika Sentz

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Session Recording

Watch the full session below or jump to the highlights in the summary.

Session Summary

Matt kicked off the session by recapping a busy month for the development team. ACF has shipped four releases since the last community gathering, including critical security fixes in June and the recent release of ACF 6.8.4.

This latest version addresses a security patch alongside enhancement fixes ensuring ACF PRO satisfies core dependency requirements when third-party plugins require the free version of Advanced Custom Fields.

The headline feature of the month, however, remains the new ACF Data Store introduced in ACF 6.8.1.

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Modernizing Integration with the Gutenberg Editor

Traditionally, ACF operated independently of WordPress’s native JavaScript data architecture. Under the hood, Gutenberg relies heavily on Redux-like data stores to track post titles, blocks, and attributes in real-time. By bridging this gap, the new ACF Data Store allows developers to interact natively with ACF data right within the editor console.

Note: The ACF Data Store is currently an opt-in feature to ensure backward compatibility as implementation rolls out. Developers can activate it using the acf/settings/enable_data_store filter.

Once enabled, developers gain access to an array of powerful selectors and dispatchers via wp.data.select(‘acf/fields’). This facilitates clean, custom JavaScript workflows without needing to rely on legacy jQuery methods.

  • getFields() / getFieldGroups(): Returns data arrays containing meta-information, configuration settings, and nested repeater structure configurations for fields actively on the page.
  • getAllValuesByName(): Fetches a recursive key-value map of every ACF field value currently active in the DOM with a single command.
  • acf.store.get() / acf.store.set(): Handy global shorthand methods designed to read or update field data on the fly.
  • acf.store.subscribe(): Enables developers to register listeners that run callbacks whenever a targeted field value updates.
// Example of subscribing to an ACF field update natively

const unsub = acf.store.subscribe('description', (newValue) => {

    console.log('Field updated to: ', newValue);

});

// Unsubscribe when done

unsub();

Deep Dive into the ACF JavaScript API

Unlocking Native Block Bindings and Live Previews

The implementation of the data store immediately improves how ACF interacts with the native WordPress Block Bindings API. Previously, mapping block attributes to custom fields required manual switching to the code editor.

With the data store acting as a single source of truth, developers can bind native blocks (like a core paragraph block) to an ACF meta box field directly via the sidebar attributes panel. This configuration unlocks a live preview UI that instantly reflects changes across both fields and block contents bi-directionally.

Additionally, this architecture paves the way for a more reliable auto-save and preview routine by packaging field data directly into the core WordPress REST API requests. Long term, this foundation will assist the team in bringing the ACF field-editing experience much closer to native React-based Gutenberg workflows.

Q&A

Every ACF Chat Friday provides an opportunity to ask the team technical questions and discuss workflow challenges.

Q: Aside from these monthly meetups, what are the best ways to stay educated on these advanced features?

A: The official ACF newsletter is definitely your best bet. We use our blog posts to introduce features, but they also serve as deeply detailed launching pads packed with documentation links for everything we roll out.

Q: Can I also sync a post type’s description field to an ACF block’s description field instead of only native Gutenberg paragraphs?

A: With custom code, it is achievable. Right now, the out-of-the-box data store synchronization specifically targets core ACF meta boxes and native blocks. We haven’t built deep native integration into ACF Blocks for this specific cross-binding behavior yet, but expanding official support for block-level data store mapping is a core focus for our upcoming milestones.

Resources & Links

Coming Up on ACF Chat Fridays

Join us for the next live session on July 10th, where the format will be a roundtable discussion with the engineering team covering managing field groups, reusable templates, JSON sync workflows, client handoff, and deploying ACF config between environments. Plus open Q&A.

Register for the next session of ACF Chat Fridays →

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