I want to prevent fatal error in my theme if the ACF plugin is deactivated or not installed.
The main function of the plugin is get_field().
I wrote this code in my functions.php to check:
if ( !function_exists('get_field') ) {
function get_field() {
echo '<span>plugin ACF is not installed</span>';
}
}
Please tell me this is acceptable practice?
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Answer
First of all, this is not the main plugin function, just one of them. Probably, most commonly used by a plugin user in a theme. Another one is the_field(), which actually prints value (get_field() returns it).
Regarding practice of defining your custom function – it’s fine. However, I would not print that long message in every place where ACF field is expected – some of them may be short (numbers), and this message will break the layout. Printing something shorter is better, imo.
Also, function_exists is proper check, not is_plugin_active, because ACF can also be shipped as a library with a theme framework or other plugin.
Another option is to remove ACF dependency on the frontend completely. You can output the contents of the fields with get_post_meta() and prevent ACF plugin from loading on the frontend entirely. See these two posts for details:
http://www.billerickson.net/code/disable-acf-frontend/
http://www.billerickson.net/advanced-custom-fields-frontend-dependency/