How to make number of blog posts a custom field?

Question

I'm using advanced custom fields and I have the following code:

<?php
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 3 );
$lastposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach($lastposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
?>

Where the number of posts = 3, I was wondering if I could turn this into a custom field in the editor so that my client can easily change how many posts per page should display. Now using my 'simple this is how it should work' PHP brain, I thought I could use the following:

<?php $numposts = <?php the_field('number_of_posts', $number_of_posts); ?>; ?>

But it doesn't quite work.

Any tips? Thanks.

Answer 1

It might actually still work, but the syntax is currently wrong (you have a PHP opening tag inside another opening tag). And you can assign the value of the custom field to a variable using the get_field function. What if you try this?

<?php
// assuming your ACF name is 'number_of_posts'
$numposts = get_field('number_of_posts');
$args = array( 'numberposts' => $numposts );
$lastposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach($lastposts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
?>