Advance wp_query with conditions…

• jabbamonkey

• June 24, 2015 at 7:14 am

I am doing an advanced wp_query that is looking for various custom fields, based on alot of conditions. It isn’t pulling anything up… so I wanted to check that I am doing the query correctly. Below is what I am trying to check, and then the code for what I have tried …

Please let me know what I am doing wrong in my query….

1. The first checks if the banner_image2 field exists…
2. AND we check if the banner_link field exists…
3. AND we check if the banner_loc = $bannerloc (in this case, = 1)…
4. AND Then we check if the banner_cats multi select contains any items $pagecategories…
OR if banner_cats contains value of 1
5, AND then check if banner_towns = $towncatid
OR if banner_towns=1;

// These values outside of the include...
$bannerloc = 1;
$sizekey = 'banner_image2';
$pagecategories =  wp_get_post_categories(); // get_the_category();

// Query Args inside the include...
$args = array (
	'post_type' => 'post', 
	'orderby' => 'rand', 
	'cat' => 2231, 
	'posts_per_page' => 1,
	'meta_query'	=> array(
		'relation'		=> 'AND',
			array(
				'key'	 	=> $sizekey,
				'value'	  	=> '',
				'compare' 	=> '!=',
			),
			array(
				'key'	 	=> 'banner_link',
				'value'	  	=> '',
				'compare' 	=> '!=',
			),
			array(
				'key'	  	=> 'banner_loc',
				'value'	  	=> $bannerloc,
				'compare' 	=> '=',
			),
			array(
				'relation'		=> 'OR',
					array(
						'key'	  	=> 'banner_cats',
						'value'	  	=> $pagecategories,
						'compare' 	=> 'IN',
					),
					array(
						'key'	  	=> 'banner_cats',
						'value'	  	=> 1,
						'compare' 	=> '=',
					),	
			),		
			array(
				'relation'		=> 'OR',
					array(
						'key'	  	=> 'banner_towns',
						'value'	  	=> $towncatid,
						'compare' 	=> '=',
					),
					array(
						'key'	  	=> 'banner_towns',
						'value'	  	=> 1,
						'compare' 	=> '=',
					),
			),
		),
);

$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : 
	while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); 

	// Code for post here...
		
	endwhile; 
	wp_reset_postdata();
endif;

• John Huebner

• June 24, 2015 at 8:09 am

banner_cats is a multiselect field. This field will contain an array of category IDs and will be stored as a serialized array. You can’t do "IN" or "=" here.

To match this you need to do something like this:

array(
    'key' => 'banner_cats',
    'value' => '"'.$cat_id.'"',
    'compare' => 'LIKE',
)

Notice the double quotes include in the value. This is so that 1 will only match 1 and not 10, 20.

To do something resembling an “IN” you would need to loop through the list of categories and create a “LIKE” query for each of them.

The reason that you get nothing is that the meta queries on banner_cats and banner_towns are retuning nothing.

Hope that helps.

~JH

• jabbamonkey

• June 24, 2015 at 8:43 am

Awesome! That was definitely an issue…

• John Huebner

• June 24, 2015 at 8:48 am

The multiple nested meta queries all look good, quite well done, except for what I pointed out which is mostly just understanding out ACF actually stores some fields.

• jabbamonkey

• June 24, 2015 at 9:17 am

I’ve cleaned things up a bit… but now I’m getting an trim error from the meta.php file…

Here is the error..

Warning: trim() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/tipsfromtown/public_html/wp-includes/meta.php on line 1432

Since I’ve already closed this topic (cause the initial problem was fixed), and noone is responding to this thread anymore, I’ll open a new one with my code…