How to search / filter by ACF repeater fields?

How to search / filter by ACF repeater fields?

Do you want to use filtering of your wordpress records / posts using ACF repeater field if so then this article is for you

Because the only one good way is to save data from repeater to special format that allow us to search it in future:

/*
    in this example I have a repeater field named "colors"
    one of the rows of this repeater is named "color"
    and I want to be able to search, sort and filter by this field
*/
 
// create a function that will convert this repeater during the acf/save_post action
// priority of 20 to run after ACF is done saving the new values
add_filter('acf/save_post', 'convert_color_to_standard_wp_meta', 20);
 
function convert_color_to_standard_wp_meta($post_id) {
   
  // pick a new meta_key to hold the values of the color field
  // I generally name this field by suffixing _wp to the field name
  // as this makes it easy for me to remember this field name
  // also note, that this is not an ACF field and will not
  // appear when editing posts, it is just a db field that we
  // will use for searching
  $meta_key = 'color_wp';
   
  // the next step is to delete any values already stored
  // so that we can update it with new values
  // and we don't need to worry about removing a value
  // when it's deleted from the ACF repeater
  delete_post_meta($post_id, $meta_key);
   
  // create an array to hold values that are already added
  // this way we won't add the same meta value more than once
  // because having the same value to search and filter by
  // would be pointless
  $saved_values = array();
   
  // now we'll look at the repeater and save any values
  if (have_rows('colors', $post_id)) {
    while (have_rows('colors', $post_id)) {
      the_row();
       
      // get the value of this row
      $color = get_sub_field('color');
       
      // see if this value has already been saved
      // note that I am using isset rather than in_array
      // the reason for this is that isset is faster than in_array
      if (isset($saved_values[$color])) {
        // no need to save this one we already have it
        continue;
      }
       
      // not already save, so add it using add_post_meta()
      // note that we are using false for the 4th parameter
      // this means that this meta key is not unique
      // and can have more then one value
      add_post_meta($post_id, $meta_key, $color, false);
       
      // add it to the values we've already saved
      $saved_values[$color] = $color;
       
    } // end while have rows
  } // end if have rows
} // end function
 
/*
    15 lines of code and now instead of dealing with complicated filters
    and "LIKE" queries and modifying the WHERE portion of the query
    and slowing down our site, instead we can simply use the
    color_wp meta key in a simple more simple WP_Query()
   
*/

Done!

No you can use repeater for search and filtering