Meta_query to check if current user is in relational User field

• bolgerandbattle

• March 9, 2017 at 3:44 am

I have a query that checks whether the current user is in the User relational field type. The problem is that the query args return an infinite loop, even though I run if($query->have_posts()).

Is this the correct way to set up the meta_query? I couldn’t find any documentation on checking the user relational array.

$query_args = array(
  'numberposts' => -1,
  'post_type' => 'job',
  //Only grab jobs where current user ID is in the team field
  'meta_query' => array(
    'key' => 'team',
    'value' => $current_user->ID,
    'compare' => 'IN',
   )
);

• John Huebner

• March 12, 2017 at 3:07 am

I don’t really see enough here to tell what could be causing an infinite loop. The only error that I see is with the meta_query. If this is a user field then ACF stores a serialized array of user IDs and you need to do something like

$query_args = array(
  'numberposts' => -1,
  'post_type' => 'job',
  //Only grab jobs where current user ID is in the team field
  'meta_query' => array(
    'key' => 'team',
    'value' => '"'.$current_user->ID.'"',
    'compare' => 'LIKE',
   )
);

• bolgerandbattle

• March 14, 2017 at 2:06 am

I had initially tried that, but it didn’t work. I discovered that using get_posts() instead of WP_Query() worked, but it required nesting the meta_query inside of a second array.

Here’s the code that worked for me:

$job_posts = get_posts(array(
  'post_type' => 'job',
  //Only grab jobs where current user ID is in the team field
  'meta_query' => array(
    array(
      'key' => 'team',
      'value' => '"'.$current_user->ID.'"',
      'compare' => 'LIKE',
    )
   )
));

• John Huebner

• March 14, 2017 at 9:16 am

Sorry, I completely missed the fact that your meta_query was not formatted correctly in your OP. Yes, meta_query requires a nested array for a value. The same thing you did for get_posts() will work with WP_Query

• bolgerandbattle

• March 14, 2017 at 11:20 pm

Thanks for that info John. Noted for future loops.

• caiobleggi

• April 25, 2018 at 11:41 pm

Just for record for the future users.

I tried everything you said before, but I’m allowing multiple values at the relational user field. The only way it works was as I found on this stack: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/55354/how-can-i-create-a-meta-query-with-an-array-as-meta-field.

Since the meta_value is a serialized array (on my case), I had to handle it a little differently:

'meta_query' => array(
    array(
        'key'     => 'my_meta_key',
        'value'   => serialize( strval( get_current_user_id() ) ),
        'compare' => 'LIKE'
    )
)