WP_Query … condition statements … now getting trim errors…

• jabbamonkey

• June 24, 2015 at 2:00 pm

I have a long list of conditional statements in my query, looking for fields containing certain elements… I had some trouble with getting the query to work at all, but that was cleared up with this forum’s help. However, now that the query is pulling results, I’m getting a trim error from the meta.php file…

Here is the error (and it is occurring somewhere within the keys: banner_locs, banner_cats, and banner_towns … when I remove those parts from the query, there is no error)

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

and here is my code…

<?php
$pagecats = get_the_category($post->ID); // wp_get_post_categories(); // 
foreach ($pagecats  as $catz) {
   $pagecategories[] = $catz->term_taxonomy_id;
}
$pagecategories[] = '1'; // include "all cats" acf value

$currenttowns = array();
$currenttowns[] = '1';  // include "all towns" acf value
if($towncatid!=0 || $towncatid!='') {
	$currenttowns[] = $towncatid;
}

?><!-- CURRENT CATS AND ALL : <?php print_r($pagecategories); ?>--><?php
// Prints a straight array with 2 elements ...
?><!-- CURRENT TOWNS and ALL : <?php print_r($currenttowns); ?>--><?php
// Prints a straight array with 2 elements ...
?><!-- LOCATION : <?php echo $bannerloc; ?>--><?php
// Prints the value '1'

$sizekey = "'banner_image2'"; // Is this correct??? See sizekey below...

// Query Args
$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' 	=> 'LIKE',
			),
			array(
				'key'	  	=> 'banner_cats',
				'value'	  	=> $pagecategories,
				'compare' 	=> 'LIKE',
			),
			array(
				'key'	  	=> 'banner_towns',
				'value'	  	=> $currenttowns,
				'compare' 	=> 'LIKE',
			),
		),
); 

// then if while statements... for loop

?>

• John Huebner

• June 24, 2015 at 9:30 pm

That’s odd. It seems that WP is saying that it’s seeing one of those fields as an array.

Can you do some testing, just do one of the meta queries at a time and figure out which one is causing the error?

• jabbamonkey

• June 24, 2015 at 11:53 pm

The two trim errors are coming up when the two keys are involved (banner_cats and banner_towns). So, if I remove one of those arrays from the query, only one trim error occurs. Both of those keys are multi select fields in acf.

When I print the $pagecategories array (to check it), I get…

Array
(
    [0] => 1
)

When I print $currenttowns array, I get…

Array
(
    [0] => 1
    [1] => 3215
)

So, I have one array (i.e. $currenttowns) comparing to the select field array (i.e. banner_towns) … can I not do that? I need to see if any of the fields in the arrays match, if so, then the query should call that post.

• jabbamonkey

• June 25, 2015 at 1:13 am

I’ve found a “round-a-bout” way to do this… I run the query without the banner_cats and banner_towns conditions (and get rid of the posts_per_page). This will pull alot more results… Then, during the while loop, I check each post for an array_intersect for each meta keys. Since I only want 1 result, I break the loop if one is found.

While the solution works, I’d prefer to do this during the query process (to save resources)

• John Huebner

• June 25, 2015 at 1:26 am

This is extremely odd, when you try to use “IN” WP does not detect that there is an array stored in the field, it’s looking for multiple meta value rows in the database. When you attempt to have WP treat it as a string with “LIKE” it then decides to detect that there is an array (serialized) stored in the field.

WP has been doing some work on the meta queries to allow for the new clauses for meta_query https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/03/30/query-improvements-in-wp-4-2-orderby-and-meta_query/

Try forcing the field type to “CHAR”

			
			array(
				'key'	  	=> 'banner_cats',
				'value'	  	=> $pagecategories,
				'compare' 	=> 'LIKE',
				'type'		=> 'CHAR',
			),