Reply To: Search form with meta_field

• Beee

• December 2, 2016 at 8:40 am

For those who are interested in using the WP search to search for a value in a meta field, see the code below. Ofcourse adding 1 line to a form needs less code and is thus a lot less error prone.

This is the search form. In my case I want to search for name only, so I added line 4 to uniquely identify this search form (so pre_get_posts won’t be applied to all search queries).

<form class="form form--search" action="" method="post">
    <fieldset>
        <div>
            <input type="hidden" name="name_search" value="1" />
            <input type="search" name="s" class="search__input" placeholder="Search for a name" />
            <button type="submit" class="button button--submit">Submit</button>
        </div>
    </fieldset>
</form>

Then add this to functions.php:

function search_filter_for_name( $query ) {
    if ( ! is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() && isset( $_POST['name_search'] ) && 1 == $_POST['name_search'] ) {
        if ( $query->is_search ) {
            // set search string to false, otherwise the search searches in the_content() for this phrase and I want a specific field only
            $query->set( 's', false );
            // set your desired post type(s)
            $query->set( 'post_type', array( 'your_post_type' ) );

            // set the meta query for your specific field
            $query->set( 'meta_query', array(
                'key'       => 'field_name',
                'value'     => $query->query['s']
            ) );
        }
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'search_filter_for_name' );

my initial question still stands