WP_Query to exclude posts by multiple meta keys

• Hypochlorite

• March 23, 2023 at 3:47 pm

Hi Friends,

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what I have done wrong here. I have a post type called “people”. I have 2 custom fields (among others) that are true/false for “alumni” and “intern_dev”.

I want to exclude from the list of people, anyone who has a value of “true” (or 1) for the “alumi” and/or “intern_dev” fields.

Here’s the custom fields:

acf_add_local_field_group(array (
        'key' => 'group_peoplestat',
        'title' => 'People Status',
        'fields' => array (
            array (
                'key' => 'field_alum',
                'label' => 'Alumni?',
                'name' => 'alumni',
                'type' => 'true_false',
                'instructions' => '',
                'required' => 0,
                'conditional_logic' => 0,
                'wrapper' => array (
                    'width' => '',
                    'class' => '',
                    'id' => '',
                ),
                'message' => '',
                'default_value' => 0,
            ),
            array (
                'key' => 'field_intern',
                'label' => 'Intern Dev?',
                'name' => 'intern_dev',
                'type' => 'true_false',
                'instructions' => '',
                'required' => 0,
                'conditional_logic' => 0,
                'wrapper' => array (
                    'width' => '',
                    'class' => '',
                    'id' => '',
                ),
                'message' => '',
                'default_value' => 0,
            ),
        ),
        'location' => array (
            array (
                array (
                    'param' => 'post_type',
                    'operator' => '==',
                    'value' => 'people',
                ),
            ),
        ),
        'menu_order' => 4,
        'position' => 'side',
        'style' => 'default',
        'label_placement' => 'top',
        'instruction_placement' => 'label',
        'hide_on_screen' => '',
        'active' => 1,
        'description' => '',
    ));

and here’s my query:

'meta_query'    => array(
                    'relation' => 'OR',
                    array(
                        'key' => 'alumni',
                        'value'	  	=> '0',
                        'compare' 	=> '==',
                    ),
                    array(
                        'key' => 'alumni',
                        'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
                    ),
                    array(
                        'key' => 'intern_dev',
                        'value'	  	=> '0',
                        'compare' 	=> '==',
                    ),
                    array(
                        'key' => 'intern_dev',
                        'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
                    ),
                )
            
            );

I have tried everything I can think of, and for some reason I am just not able to get this to stick. I’ve var_dumped the query, looked at the db, anything I could think of. Can someone help?

• John Huebner

• April 2, 2023 at 11:20 am

The reason is OR

If alumi == 1 and intern_dev == 0 then one OR the other == 0 and will be returned.

You need to use nested queries

'meta_query' => array(
  'relation' => 'AND',
  array(
    'relation' => 'OR',
    array(
      'key' => 'alumni',
      'value'      => '0',
      'compare'   => '==',
    ),
    array(
      'key' => 'alumni',
      'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS',
    )
  ),
  array(
    'relation' => 'OR',
    array(
      'key' => 'intern_dev',
      'value'      => '0',
      'compare'   => '==',
    ),
    array(
      'key' => 'intern_dev',
      'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS',
    )
  )
),