17 Sep

ACF PRO 6.4 Alpha 1

By Matt Shaw

We’re excited to announce the first alpha release for ACF PRO 6.4. This PRO-only release introduces support for WooCommerce high-performance order storage (HPOS).

As it is only an alpha release, we do not recommend using this on production sites, but have released it for the broader ACF community who wish to test on development and staging environments.

What is HPOS?

WooCommerce version 8.2 and above enables high-performance order storage by default, which means that instead of storing order data in the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables, orders are now stored in custom database tables.

ACF has traditionally used WordPress core functions such as update_metadata() for storing field values, however these functions will not work with the custom database tables used by HPOS. To get around this, we’ve substantially refactored the way that ACF stores and retrieves field values, and included an integration that uses the methods recommended by WooCommerce.

A nice side effect of this refactor is that it will be much easier to add other similar integrations in the future. We’ll be writing up some official documentation on this in the coming weeks.

Testing the Alpha

To access this release, please log in to your account and navigate to the “Licenses” page. You can then select “6.4.0-alpha1” from the available downloads.

Once you’ve installed the alpha on a development or staging site, you can test the HPOS integration by creating a field group (or editing an existing field group) and creating a Location Rule which displays the field group if the Post Type is equal to “Order”:

A screenshot of the ACF field group location rules set to show up on WooCommerce orders.

The field group will then display on the order edit screen, and ACF will be able to save/retrieve field values regardless of if HPOS is enabled or disabled.

What’s Next

We’re continuing work on ACF & ACF PRO 6.4 and expect to have another alpha available soon, which will contain any feedback implemented from this alpha as well as some improvements and bug fixes for ACF Blocks. For the latest ACF news, follow us on X @wp_acf.

Changelog

  • New: ACF fields can now be added to WooCommerce orders when using HPOS
  • Improvement: ACF now uses Composer Autoload functionality to automatically load some classes

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