Restrict searches to pages that have a particular Custom Field assigned

[Ryan LoganParticipant]

Hello. Sorry, I thought I had this figured out. I’d like to restrict searches to pages that have a particular Custom Field assigned. We’re trying to make it so that search only return data from Employee pages. If there is a better way to do it…I’m all ears.

Thank you,
Ryan

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi Ryan,

I suggest creating a “hidden” custom field filter, this is exactly what it’s designed for: https://i.imgur.com/UUgYzC1.png

More info in the documentation.

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

[Ryan LoganParticipant]

Thank you. My fault – let me clarify further what I’m doing.

-I have an employee page named “Tom” and a non-employee page named “Home”.
-Tom has a custom field assigned named “Ajax Search”
-Home does not have a custom field assigned.
-Plugin: not showing/allownig users to change search settings criteria
-Plugin: configured to trigger on a minimum entry of 3 characters
-Plugin: on the General Options tab the only options I have turned on are Search in Pages, Search in Content and Search in Custom Fields > My custom field Ajax Search.

Now, let’s say I do a search for “SEO”. This search shows results for Tom, but also shows results for Home.

We need Home and any other non-employee page to be ignored in search results.

Thanks again,
Ryan

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Ok, I see what you need. You want to restrict the results where the “Ajax Search” custom field exists.

That’s a bit harder, but not impossible. I have a solution, which will work with the Regular engine.
Try putting this filtering function to the functions.php file in your active theme directory:

add_filter( 'asp_cpt_query_add_where', 'asp_add_extra_where', 1, 1 );
  
function asp_add_extra_where( $query ) {
  global $wpdb;
  // Change this to the custom field name
  $custom_field = "custom_field";
  
  $query .= " AND EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM $wpdb->postmeta as pm 
              WHERE pm.post_id = $wpdb->posts.ID AND pm.meta_key = '$custom_field')";
              
  return $query; 
}

Change the $custom_field = … variable to the custom field key. This will add an extra paramter to the query to do a very fast check for custom field existence of the the given custom field for the result set.

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

[Ryan LoganParticipant]

Rock-star support! It’s working beautifully. Thank you.

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

You are welcome! I’m glad it’s working.

I will mark this topic as resolved now. Feel free to open a new one if you have other questions.

If you like the plugin, feel free to rate it on your codecanyon downloads page, it’s greatly appreciated.

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

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