2 Problems with custom archive

• 

  • OsakaWebbie

  • July 18, 2014 at 11:44 pm

  I’m trying to make a custom archive with filters (like this tutorial) on two fields. Although both fields are type=Select, just like the tutorial, one of them allows multiple values, and that seems to be causing problems. A URL like http://thinkword.com/events/?event_category=&day_of_week=Sunday (day_of_week is the field that can have multiple values for a given event) should find records – at the moment there are two events with Sunday selected. But apparently they are not found. The other field works fine with identical code – you can try http://thinkword.com/events/?event_category=worship&day_of_week= and it will work.

  The second problem is that when the filter finds no matching records, get_field_object() doesn’t return the array of field information needed to to build the sets of checkboxes. I don’t know why that happens, but it happens in the tutorial, too – look at 11:05 on the video and you’ll see the checkboxes disappear (his doesn’t have an error like mine does, and I could of course prevent the error, but I want the checkboxes!).

  Here is my entire in-progress template (I’m using StartUpPro theme, if that matters):

  <?php get_header(); ?>
  <section id="content" role="main">
    <header class="header">
      <h1 class="entry-title"><?php _e( 'OIC Events', 'startup' ); ?></h1>
      <div id="filter-oicevents" class="custom-filter">
  <?php 
  function make_checkboxes($field,$values) {
  ?>
      <span class="checklist-title"><?php printf(__("Filter by %s"),$field['label']); ?>: </span>
      <ul id="<?php echo $field['_name']; ?>" class="checkbox-list">
    <?php foreach( $field['choices'] as $choice_value => $choice_label ): ?>
        <li><input type="checkbox" value="<?php echo $choice_value; ?>" <?php
      if (in_array($choice_value, $values)): ?>checked="checked"<?php endif; ?> /><?php
      echo $choice_label; ?></li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
      </ul>
  <?php
  }
  make_checkboxes(get_field_object('event_category'),explode(',', $_GET['event_category']));
  make_checkboxes(get_field_object('day_of_week'),explode(',', $_GET['day_of_week']));
  ?>
      </div>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  (function($) {
    $('#filter-oicevents').on('change', 'input[type="checkbox"]', function(){
      var url = "<?php echo home_url('events') ?>";
      $('#filter-oicevents').find('ul.checkbox-list').each(function() {
        url += (url == "<?php echo home_url('events') ?>" ) ? "?" : "&";
        url += $(this).attr("id") + "=";
        vals = [];
        $(this).find('input:checked').each(function(){
          vals.push( $(this).val() );
        });
        vals = vals.join(",");
        //console.log( vals );
        url += vals;
      });
      window.location.replace(url);
    });
  })(jQuery);
  </script>
  
    </header>
  <?php
  if ( have_posts() ) :
    while ( have_posts() ) :
      the_post();
  ?>
    <article id="oicevent-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
      <header>
        <h2 class="entry-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
      </header>
  <?php get_template_part( 'entry', 'summary' ) ); ?>
    </article>
  <?
    endwhile;
  endif;
  get_template_part( 'nav', 'below' );
  ?>
  </section>
  <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
  <?php get_footer(); ?>
• 

  • OsakaWebbie

  • July 29, 2014 at 1:48 pm

  Ignore the first question – I gave up completely on allowing multiple selections, as it ran into too many problems and the case where we might need more than one is purely theoretical, so I decided to keep it simple for now.

  But the second issue needs solving if I’m going to have these filters at all. As I said, the problem can easily be seen on the tutorial video at timecode 11:05, so it’s not something unique to my code. If anyone else has implemented such a filter, how did you deal with get_field_object() failing when the result set is empty? This looks like a bug in get_field_object() to me.
• 

  • OsakaWebbie

  • July 30, 2014 at 1:11 pm

  Okay, I finally figured this out on my own. I studied the get_field_object() function more deeply, and on this documentation page, in the “field_key vs field_name” section, there is a hint. It is not said directly, but apparently even if posts have been created that use the Field Group, if a filter causes the current query of posts (using the pre_get_posts hook) to return none of them, field_name won’t work. Even Elliot used the field_name in his tutorial, but in the case of a filter like this, you MUST use the field_key, even though it makes the code harder to read.