WordPress: Advanced search for custom post types and custom fields

Question

I have the following problem. I am trying to create a real estate website with wordpress. I have created a custom post type and I included the following fields with Advanced custom fields: Listing type (select: For sale, For rent), Property type (select: Apartment, House), Price (Number), City (field type: select)

I have the following query to get the values:

<?php
  $args = array(
            'post_type' => 'properties',
            'posts_per_page' => 10,
            'posts_per_page' => -1,
            'meta_query' => array(
                    array(
                        'key'     => 'property_type',
                        'value'   => 'Apartment',
                    ),
                ),
        );
  $loop = new WP_Query( $args );
  while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
  ?>
  <?php
    $property_type = get_field('property_type');
            $property_price = get_field('price');
            $property_location = get_field('location');
            $property_description = get_field('description');
    ?>
    <div class="propert_list">
        <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
        <div class="property_type">
            Location - <strong><?php echo $property_type; ?></strong>
        </div>
        <div class="property_price">
            Price - <strong><?php echo $property_price; ?></strong>
        </div>
        <div class="property_location">
            Location - <strong><?php echo $property_location['address']; ?></strong>
        </div>
        <div class="property_description">
            Property Description - <strong><?php echo $property_description; ?></strong>
        </div>
    </div>
    <br /><hr />
    <?php endwhile; ?>

Where and how can I create my search form to filter properties by 'property_type' and 'location'.

chrisriis chrisriis · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-01T13:04:37

One solution is to install Search & Filter. It allows you to filter the search based on given post type/s, meta field/s etc. and is very powerful. A drawback is that you may have to pay for the Pro version.

Another solution could be to add hidden input fields to your PHP searchform. E.g:

<input type="hidden" name="post_type[]" value="properties" />

to only search for the properties, and do the same for filtering your meta values. This is easy to implement, but less flexible and I prefer to separate my view and logic anyway.

A third solution would be to use the pre_get_posts filter. Then you could write e.g.

if ( $post_types ) $query->set( 'post_type', 'properties' );

…and so on, inside this filter. There are many examples out there that shows you how to do this. Just search Google for the filter name :-)

WordPress: Advanced search for custom post types and custom fields

3 Answers