Advanced Custom Fields in Functions.php (Wordpress)

Question

I am trying to pull an Advanced Custom Field in my Functions.php of my child theme and it's not working. Any ideas?

add_action('init', 'my_function_to_add_field_groups');
function my_function_to_add_field_groups() {
  $section_name = get_field('section_name');

  print "the $section_name";
}

Answer 1

A couple things i'm seeing without having any more context then what's given:

1. Is the custom field you're trying to access one that does not require specifying the 'post_id'? If it does require 'post_id', for debugging at least i would give adding the 'post_id' as a parameter: get_field('field_name', {Your Post ID});

2. When you define print "the $section_name"; PHP is assuming that your variable is part of the string and not meant to be concatenated. Can you try a quick concatenation of the string+variable like: print "the ".$section_name; ?