Reply To: Filtering Archives Using Checkbox Custom Fields

• Elliot

• January 13, 2014 at 9:54 am

Hi @realph

Yes, becuase ACF is saving the checked values as a serialized array, the ‘IN’ compare will not work. The IN compare is used when the database value is a single string value, and the value used in the $meta_query is an array. This is not the data setup you have, so you should not use this.

The pseudo code for this query is:

get all posts where the meta_value for is 'a' or 
the meta_value for is 'b' or
the meta_value for is 'c'

You can write this like so:

<?php 

add_action('pre_get_posts', 'my_pre_get_posts');
 
function my_pre_get_posts( $query ) {

    if( is_admin() ) { return; }
 
    $meta_query = $query->get('meta_query'); // get original meta query
    
    
    // validate type
    if( empty($_GET['type']) )
    {
	    return;
    }
    
    
    // get types as an array
    // - use explode to get an array of values from type=a|b|c
    $types = explode('|', $_GET['type']);
    
    
    // set compare for the meta_query
    // - http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query
    $meta_query['relation'] = 'OR';
    
    
    foreach( $types as $type )
    {
	    $meta_query[] = array(
            'key'       => 'type',
            'value'     => '"' . $type . '"',
            'compare'   => 'LIKE',
        );
    }
	
	
    $query->set('meta_query', $meta_query); // update the meta query args
    
    return; // always return
}

?>

Hope that helps

Thanks
E