Query by repeaterfield subfield(s)

• zaphod

• January 27, 2022 at 2:29 pm

Hi,
I am scratching my head if this is even possible. I have a CPT with a repeater field called “dates”. The repeater contains multiple fields but I’m only interested in the field “date” (value returns as ‘Ymd’).

On my archive page I wan’t to modify the main query to only output those posts that have a date that lies in the future. I can query the value of the first date with its index like so:

$query->set('meta_query',
array(
  'relation' => 'AND', 
    array(
      'key'  => 'dates_0_date',
      'value' => date('Ymd'),
      'compare' => '<='
    ),
  ),
);

$query->set('meta_key', dates_0_date');
$query->set('orderby', 'meta_value');
$query->set('order','ASC');

But I have variable number of dates per post. So when I wan’t to query by the lowest “date” field that is still in the future I am completely lost.

I’ve tried to use a wildcard on the key like ‘dates%date’ but that doesn’t work.
Does anyone know if and how this is possible to achieve?

Thanks for any help or tips!

• John Huebner

• January 27, 2022 at 3:05 pm

This is covered in the “4. Sub custom field values” section of this page.

• zaphod

• January 27, 2022 at 6:59 pm

Hi John, thanks for the link. I’ve looked at that page but didn’t realise my problem was covered there. I’ve managed to get it to work but honestly have no clue why/how it works.

Thanks again!

• John Huebner

• January 27, 2022 at 7:07 pm

It has to do with changing the WHERE part of the query from something like
WHERE meta_key = "dates_0_date"
to
WHERE meta_key LIKE "dates_%_date"

• zaphod

• January 27, 2022 at 7:15 pm

OMG I was only focused on the key/value comparison and was wondering how I could compare two dates with “LIKE” … I am stupid!

Thanks again