Customizing Search

You can customize the criteria WordPress uses to match search results to include meta fields:

register_post_type('flower');
register_post_status('in_season');

Post::configure_advanced_search([
  [
    'post_type' => ['flower'],
    'meta_fields' => [
      'color',
      ['key' => '%thorn%', 'key_compare' => 'LIKE'],
    ],
    'post_status' => ['in_season'],
  ],
  [
    'post_type' => ['page'],
    'meta_fields' => [
      'details',
    ],
  ],
]);

This tells WordPress search queries to compare not just post_content, post_title, and post_excerpt, but also:

• for the flower post type, match on:
  • meta_value for the color field; and
  • for any fields whose keys match the pattern %thorn% (e.g. thorniness or has_thorns)
  • for posts in in_season status only
• for the page type:
  • match on meta_value for the details field
  • for published posts only (this is the default)

More work is planned for the near future to make this even more powerful. Stay tuned!