WP meta_query with ACF multi selects

• kender

• April 28, 2021 at 3:34 am

I came across a need where I was searching for a possible array of options within a multi select. I will post my solution but curious if there was an easier/ cleaner way to do it — so looking for either a better solution, or feedback on my solution

First, an example of the setup and need

user has a list of favorite colors (red / orange / yellow / green / blue / violet)
user can choose 3, so he selects (yellow / green / blue)

I need to find users who like primary colors (red / yellow / blue)

at first I thought a simple IN search with array for value would fill my need, but I later realized that the array of user selections was stored as a serialized string in the database, so it wasn’t finding my people

What I came up with is this

  $cpt_query = array('relation' => 'OR'); // doing an or query, because we want people who like one of the colors, not all of the colors
  foreach($_POST['cpt_query'] as $selection) {
    $cpt_query[] = array(
      'key'     => 'people_color', // this is where they have their color stored
      'value'   => '"' .$selection . '"', // stored as serialized, so surrounded by quotes, stops a false true for bluegreen if searching "blue" by surrounding it by quotes
      'compare' => 'LIKE'
    );
  }

  $args = array(
    'numberposts' => -1,
    'orderby'     => 'title',
    'order'       => 'ASC',
    'post_type'   => 'people', // custom post type of people
    'meta_query'  => array(
      'relation'  => 'AND',
      $cpt_query,
      array(
        'key' => 'people_type', // other value we are searching for, but this is a 1 to 1
        'value' => $_POST['type'],
        'compare' => 'LIKE'
      )
    )
  );
  $posts = get_posts( $args );