[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #34211: Ability to specify fields WP_Query can search

[WordPress Trac]

#34211: Ability to specify fields WP_Query can search
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 Reporter:  paulwilde    |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Query        |     Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:
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Comment (by akibjorklund):

 This is a common requirement for sites that are more complex than blogs.
 Typically this issue is solved with a plugin that creates their own
 database tables or by integrating WordPress with external search
 providers. I think the ability to search the content is a basic feature of
 a CMS. This is why I think it is something WordPress too should definitely
 be able to do somehow – in a way that would serve common use cases.

 A simplest possible solution to the problem I can think of – that still
 ''could'' be scalable – is to add a parameter to WP_Query that would allow
 you do define a single meta key that would be included in the search. If
 one would want multiple meta values to be searched, one would have to
 programmatically concatenate all those values into a single meta value
 every time a post is saved. One can already do LIKE in `meta_compare`, but
 ordering is not affected and searching terms across columns will not work
 (searching `foo bar` when`foo` is in content and `bar` in meta field will
 not find anything).

 The downside of this approach compared to the one proposed above would be
 to not be able to define fields to query dynamically per query. And also
 there would be migration issues, when the definition of included fields
 (or terms!) would change. Some kind of indexing precess should exist. That
 could be left to plugin authors I guess. With this approach one could
 still have multiple indexes with different set of fields though, which
 could be helpful.

 I'm not sure though that this approach would fly, because it would feel
 unintuitive to developers to be limited to a single meta field. To make it
 not so unintuitive, a lot more code would have to be written to make the
 indexing of content automatic.

 The API could look something like  this: `register_search_index( $name,
 $meta_fields, $taxonomies = array() );`. Plus WP_Query would have a new
 field `search_index`.

 I'm willing to write some code if this is a direction that more people
 feel worth exploring.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34211#comment:2>
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