Adding custom fields to keyword search

• darkstarmedia.net

• January 22, 2020 at 1:47 am

Hello,

I am trying to add custom fields created by ACF to my search, I am using meta_query, but my searches do not get any results from data in the ACF’s

$this_key = $_GET['keyword'];

$args = array (
    'post_type'			=>'resources',
    'post_status'       => 'publish',
	'posts_per_page'    => 100,
    'order'      => 'ASC',
    's' => $this_key,
    'meta_query' => 
	
           array(
			'relation' => 'OR',
				
			array(
				'key'     => 'agency',
				'value'   => $this_key ,
				'compare' => 'LIKE'
   				 ),
			array(
				'key'     => 'available_form',
				'value'   => $this_key,
				'compare' => 'LIKE'
			)
		
	)

);

• John Huebner

• January 22, 2020 at 9:10 am

To do this you need to https://adambalee.com/search-wordpress-by-custom-fields-without-a-plugin/

Or use a plugin, some of them are mentioned here https://support.advancedcustomfields.com/forums/topic/adding-custom-fields-search-to-wordpress-search/

• natashamahony25

• February 14, 2020 at 10:51 pm

Thank you

• mateuszgbiorczyk

• June 18, 2021 at 8:56 am

If someone is looking for a solution to this problem is to recommend the plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/acf-better-search/

This plugin adds to default WordPress search engine the ability to search by content from selected fields of Advanced Custom Fields plugin.

Everything works automatically, no need to add any additional code.

• perrelet

• May 18, 2023 at 6:04 pm

Just a heads up that the code linked to by John has an error. The code should only target the current query, however due to the use of the global is_search() function, the filter will be applied to all queries on page load that happens to be a search.

The first snippet should be:

function cf_search_join( $join, $query ) {

  global $wpdb;

  if ( $query->is_search ) {    
    $join .=' LEFT JOIN '.$wpdb->postmeta. ' ON '. $wpdb->posts . '.ID = ' . $wpdb->postmeta . '.post_id ';
  }

  return $join;

}
add_filter('posts_join', 'cf_search_join', 10 , 2 );

Same goes forth for posts_where and posts_distinct.