WP Custom Fields Search 0.3
This is my search plugin for wordpress, designed to filter posts in a more structured way than the default wordpress search. Specifically it allows multiple form inputs to be configured to search different aspects of a post, i.e. one term could search the post content, one the post title and one could search a custom field associated with the post.
The blog admin is able to build a customised search form. It allows you to search by the standard post information and by custom fields and to choose what HTML form elements should be presented for each search field.
I originally developed this plugin for a client project. Basically the problem they had was that they were storing real estate data as wordpress posts with associated custom fields and they wanted to search for entries based on price, location and features which was not possible with the default wordpress search.
The plugin is now at point where I think it could be useful to other people although I’m aware that there are a lot of improvements that could be made. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or complaints and I will do my best to get them resolved.
You can download the plugin here.
System Requirements
I have tested with the following software versions, other versions may or may not work.
- PHP Versions 4.4.9 and 5.2.6
- WordPress 2.5, 2.7 and 2.7 MU
Quick Start Guide
I will try to put more complete documentation together at some point but for now this is a quick start guide to building a search form.
- Install the plugin. Download it here unzip it in your wp-content/plugins folder, then activate it in the plugins > installed page of your wordpress admin site.
Method 1: Add the search as a sidebar widget
- Add the widget to the sidebar on which you want it to appear. Go to the appearance > widgets section of the admin page, in the list on the left find the widget “Custom Fields Search” and click the add button next to it. It should appear in the list on the right. Click save changes
- You should now have a basic search form on the front of your site, to customise this further read on to see how to reconfigure your fields.
Method 2: Add the search code directly into your template
- Go to the custom fields config page in your admin section, Settings > WP Custom Fields Search
- Copy the example PHP code from this page into your template file.
- You should now have a basic search form on the front of your site, to customise this further follow the instructions below for setting up fields.
Setting up the fields
Admin Screenshot
Each field has a number of settings which control the way the input appears to the user and the way the search is performed. Most of the settings are hidden when you first go to edit the widget and you will need to click the show/hide config button to get access to many of the parameters.
Label sets the label displayed next to the field, you can set this to whatever you want.
Data Type controls what type of data is being searched (i.e. what database table is being used). The standard options are “Post Field” for data such as post title and post content, from the standard wordpress post data, “Custom Field” for data from the custom fields, and “Category” to search on the categories a post is in.
Data Field makes a more specific selection from the data available. The drop down list should give some sensible options, or if you know the name of the database field you want to query you can type this in manually.
Widget controls what type of HTML input is created for the front end of the site. It should be fairly obvious what these do.
Some widgets will require extra options in the Widget Options field. At the moment this is just the drop down and radio button widgets which allow you to specify a list of values for the user to choose from. If you leave the options blank then they will be automatically populated with a list of all values currently in the database, this can be useful for fields like categories and tags, but is less useful for fields like title which would just generate an entry for every post in the blog. If you want to specify the values manually you can specify this as a comma separated list of values, ‘a,b,c’ for three options with values ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ respectively, or if you want to give ‘friendly’ labels to the user you can separate the value from the label using a colon as follows ‘a:Group A,b:Group B,c:Group C’.
The Compare field controls the way that the user input is compared to the data in the database. I would expect the most commonly used of these to be “equals” which requires an exact match between the user data and the database field (useful for category searches) and the “Words in” or “Phrase In” types which will search to see if the user input is a part of the data, rather than a full match, this is useful for things like searching the text of a post. The difference between ‘words’ and ‘phrase’ is that ‘words’ splits the input into a series of words and searches for these individually whereas ‘Phrase’ searches for all the words in sequence.
The “Less Than” and “More Than” comparisons ensure that the data is less than or more than the user input respectively. This is probably only relevant for numeric input but it can be used for strings as well and will search alphabetically. For numeric input it can help to also tick the “Numeric” checkbox as sometimes the database will be set up to compare numbers alphabetically (so that 10 is less than 2).
The “Range” comparison is a little more complicated and requires the user input to be of the form A-B to return results that are between A and B. This is primarily intended to be used for Drop-downs and radio buttons where the values can be set by the site administrator. If you specify the values for the dropdown like the following: “-10:Less Than 10,10-20:Between 10 and 20,20-:More than 20”, then the user will be presented with the options “Less Than 10”, “Betwen 10 and 20” and “More than 20” but the search will be done with the values “-10″,”10-20” and “20-“. Again the numeric checkbox should be used for numeric data.
I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any trouble (or joy) with the plugin or if any of my instructions don’t make sense.
Using Presets
Presets are a new feature in version 0.3, they allow search forms to be configured separately from the sidebar widgets, the configured form doesn’t directly appear on the site but can be included in two ways.
Firstly, by copying and pasting the php code from the preset config page into a template file you can place a search form anywhere you want in your template.
Secondly, by using a preset as the basis for another search form. When setting up a search form you have the option of selecting one of the presets from a dropdown list. Selecting one will include all of the fields from this preset in your form.
Presets are configured in exactly the same way as the sidebar widget, you can find the presets in the “Settings > WP Custom Fields Search” section of your admin site.
Extending Custom Search
For developers, I’ve tried to build this in a modular way to allow extensions to be added, I will try to document this at some point in the future but if you can’t wait then the best places to get started would be to look at the filter ‘custom_search_get_classes’ in custom-search/custom-search.php and the Great Real Estate bridging code in custom-search/bridges/greatrealestate.php.
This plugin is at quite an early stage in development though so it is likely that future versions may not be compatible with the same extension interface and it is likely that any extensions will need altering when new versions are released..
Changelog
Since 0.2
- Various bug fixes
- WordPress 2.5 compatibility
- Added in preset functionality
Since 0.1
- I’ve reworked the UI and added some more sensible default values, hopefully this should make it less daunting for new users.
- Fixed a few bugs.
- Added in textual descriptions of the search parameters (for themes which support this)
Category: Wordpress Plugins | Tags: custom fields, custom search, wordpress, wordpress plugin 87 comments »
July 19th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Please Help!
The module don’t show all my custom fields when I’m creating a new form.
How can I fix this?
Thanks
July 19th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Sorry. It’s my fault.
August 28th, 2010 at 12:02 am
my theme is not support widgets.
How do by code I use this plugin?
What code do I use the theme?
September 16th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
RE: Ameise , RE: Gabrielle
I had the same problem as You, with this sticky posts which appear in search results even if they do not match the search phrase…
I wrote small solution on my blog if You still looking for it:
http://blog.meloniq.net/2010/09/16/fix-wp-custom-fields-search-sticky-posts/
November 10th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Really a wonderful plugin!
Just i a little css bug that i cannot reach to find: in the front page the wp-custom-field-search-widget include the first next widget inside the widget frame. i clip fixed this adding a blank text widget without title nor content and thats worked to me. I don’t explain why it didn’t reported before.
Second nice feature to add (i only hard-coded it) is the option to specify custom post type to search in
Thanks for your efforts, best regards, pescadito
November 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Hey Don,
This is a great plugin that is very beneficial to the website that we are putting together. My only question is whether or not there is a way to make the results page only show links to pages. I’m using it to search for static pages and the results page shows the full content of each page in the results list.
This would be quite troublesome if there were to be twenty different results that showed up at a visitor’s inquiry.
Melissa
December 30th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Is there a way to have the results sorted into alphabetical order ?
I am using WordPress 2.9.2 and WordPress 3.0.1, (2 sites) and the plugin works, but not sure if it should be sorting or not.
January 7th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Hello, How are you?
Thanks for this plugin!
How Can I change The Text that Says ANY in drop Down Menu?
Thanks.
March 10th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
Can someone help me to make the “WP Custom Fields Search” working with “WPML Multilanguage” Plugin?
April 14th, 2011 at 3:34 am
Hi there. Firstly, thanks for all your hard work!
Is there a way to display the search results in a table? This would be fantastic!
I”m sorry if this has already been asked, but I can’t find it anywhere.
Thanks,
Jason
May 17th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Hello,
I’m trying to translate your plug-in. So far I’ve found the “ANY” value on your code and replaced it with the appropriate value. Now I’m trying to change the text on the submit button but I’m having a harder time finding it. Maybe you should considering creating a separate options file to easily change those values or include options on the plug-in’s settings to change it there.
Thank you!
MACC
July 12th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Hello and Thanks for this,
What I would recommend to add, if it does not already have the feature, is the possibility to exclude some categories from any search presets or to tell it to search only one within cat, instead of entering categories as meta keys and values to go around it from a php beginner’s point of view.
And also enable easy association of search templates with each search presets…
cheers 😉
July 12th, 2011 at 10:01 am
As per the categories inclusion/exclusion issue noted above, I found the way around it, most probably talked of elsewhere already.
So, if you guys want your form preset to search into a specific category without having the category drop down:
Data type: Category
Widget: Hidden Constant
Compare: Equals
Constant Value: “the Name of the Category to search”
July 26th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
hi
thanks for the great work it’s an amazing plugin which helped me a lot in moving from joomla to wordpress.
i noticed one thing: when you set a static page as home page in your blog the plugin doesn’t seem to work anymore
hopefully this could be fixed in some way
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Great!
Is there a way to add a checkbox-input?
Thanks
September 8th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Congratulations Don.
I have found a solution to make alphabetical search.
You have to add this code:
… inside the search.php of your current Theme.
The position of the code is before “the loop”. I put here literally the code of my search.php:
…
<?php
if(have_posts()) { …
September 8th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
—?php query_posts(‘orderby=title&order=ASC’); ?—
The web cant show code. I write with out the sign of open php and close
October 1st, 2011 at 2:16 pm
http://www.etractari.ro —?php query_posts(’orderby=title&order=ASC’); ?—
try here dont work
January 15th, 2012 at 10:42 pm
I am wondering if there is a way to when someone selects a country that is I can program it to then have a sub category automatically populate the states within that country. Or if someone selects a state, that it then automatically populates the next search drop down to show the cities within that state or area. Is there a way to do that?
August 17th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
hi there
plugin is great… I am using plugin to search bedrooms, bathrooms and sleeps for a property website, but when bedrooms is less then or equal to 3 the form is not working… please help me out…
December 3rd, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Just figured out how to get custom post types working:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wp-custom-fields-search-not-searching-custom-post-types
But now, I have the issue of how the plugin handles boolean searches. I need it to do a search using the “OR” operator instead of “AND.” The problem is, in order to get any results, there has to be an exact combination of radios and dropdowns selected instead of just displaying all results that contain any of the selected items.
How can I modify the plugin to support this?
December 3rd, 2012 at 8:28 pm
WP Custom Fields Search is a fantastic plugin, we need to keep it alive!
but because https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wp-custom-fields-search-not-searching-custom-post-types?replies=8 was closed,
i add my quater here:
for WP Custom Fields Search work with custom post type, you need add this plugins:
——————————————————–
best regards,
pescadito
December 3rd, 2012 at 8:39 pm
i think this plugin is un-supported and all fork to add some feature (as ‘OR’ conditional or another) will be welcomed.
please if you do, leave a link here
December 3rd, 2012 at 8:43 pm
something was wrong when i submit comment number 80,
please refer to
– https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-custom-fields-search-not-searching-custom-post-types?replies=1
February 20th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Hi Don, thanks for the Plugin. This ist super perfect for me an my site.
Thanks Greetings Rick
April 19th, 2013 at 10:14 am
Hi,
I am getting a problem with custom field search.
only one result getting every time .tried with every mode of search like Custom post type tile, custom field ..any help for this..?
May 16th, 2013 at 3:45 am
Hi I use custom fields search plugin, it helps me a lot.
I have a problem is the following, I have a category field that was created by the plugin Advanced custom field, and I want to use this field to search posts, I created a lookup field through the plugin custom search field, select it to type as the data type: custom field and the date field the field that corresponds to my categories, so far all right, the problem is that the site in the search field shows the id of the categories instead of showing the name of the category.
I hope to answer, thank you very much.
June 4th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Hi there, could you please explain how I could put the label, in the field;
ie. Search in the field, then when user clicks on it disappears.
Thanks in Advance 🙂
July 20th, 2013 at 10:55 pm
This is on the main WP Plug in site:
This will probably be the last version of this plugin that I release, it’s not been financially viable to develop the plugin in this way and as such I have not been able to provide the level of support that I would like to. Apologies to everyone who’s emails / forum posts etc that I haven’t answered. In the near future I will be significantly reworking the plugin and re-releasing it either as a paid for plugin or free with a premium version, hopefully this should fund the time I need to put in to support and develop the project.
However, it also shows this:
Compatible up to: 3.5.2
Last Updated: 2013-6-27
Downloads: 49,815
It does look like it has been taken over by another plugin developer at: webhammer.co.uk
July 22nd, 2013 at 10:22 am
Hi, that’s also me at webhammer.co.uk, I’ve released a few bug-fix versions since I put that note up but the plan is still to rebuild from scratch and relaunch in a different format, probably with a free version and then premium functionality available to those who can pay for it. Thanks, Don
March 26th, 2014 at 9:12 pm
Good plugin to search by meta fields and taxonomies with built-in meta fields constructor http://codecanyon.net/item/wordpress-meta-data-filter/7002700?ref=realmag777
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