ACF Seeder

A wordpress plugin that seeds posts, pages using ACF fields within a theme

by bornwest · github.com/bornwest/acf-seeder

★ 0stars

0forks

Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/bornwest/acf-seeder/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Readme github.com/bornwest/acf-seeder ↗

Seeds posts, pages, ACF options pages and their field values (including images and files) from JSON files that live in the active theme, via a Seed Content page in the WordPress admin sidebar. Requires Advanced Custom Fields Pro.

Seeding is idempotent: posts are matched by post type + slug and updated in place, images are matched by file name and uploaded once. Existing posts with the same slug are overwritten.

Seed files (in the theme)

<theme>/seeds/
  data/
    <plural-name>/<slug>.json   one post per file, e.g. faqs/, team-members/
    pages/<slug>.json           one page per file
    options/<slug>.json         one ACF options page per file
  files/                        non-image files (PDFs etc.) referenced from the JSON
  images/                       images referenced from the JSON

The folder name maps to a post type by matching the post type name or its plural label (team-members → the "Team Members" post type, team-member). Post types must be registered (ACF JSON post types are fine). Post types are seeded first so pages can reference them, then pages, then options. pages and options are reserved folder names.

Override the location with the acf_seeder_dir filter (absolute path, no trailing slash).

File format

{
  "slug": "jane-doe",
  "title": "Jane Doe",
  "template": "page-templates/homepage.php",
  "group": "Template: Homepage",
  "fields": { }
}

template — pages only; sets the page template.
Options pages use the same format with no template; group is required (the options page's field group title). Values are written to ACF's shared options store, so read them with get_field('name', 'option').
group — optional; the title of the ACF field group to fill. Without it, groups are found from the post type / page template location rules.
fields — optional (omit for a blank post or page); values mirroring the logical ACF structure. Clone prefixes are resolved automatically, so a cloned header group is written as "header": { "title": "…" }. Repeaters are arrays of rows.

Field type	Value
image / file	`"file.jpg"` or `{ "file": "file.jpg", "alt": "…" }` (relative to `seeds/images`; the extension may be omitted, e.g. `"capability/fixed-income"`)
file	`"doc.pdf"` (relative to `seeds/files`; extension may be omitted)
post_object	post slug (or ID)
link	`{ "title": "…", "url": "…", "target": "" }`
true_false	`true` / `false`

SVG images are accepted: SVG uploads are allowed only while the seeder imports a file (they are not enabled site-wide), so only seed SVGs you trust.

Warnings (unmatched field names, missing images or referenced posts) are shown on the Seed Content page after a run.

Filters

acf_seeder_dir — absolute path of the seeds directory.

Structure

acf-seeder.php          plugin header, constants, bootstrap (admin only)
includes/
  class-seeder.php        picks what to seed, creates/updates posts
  class-source.php        reads the seed files
  class-field-mapper.php  seed JSON → ACF values
  class-asset-importer.php seeds/images and seeds/files → media library
  class-log.php           collects run messages
  class-admin-page.php    menu, form handler
views/admin-page.php
assets/admin-page.{css,js}