Include custom taxonomy term in search

6 comments

1. I would recommend the Search Everything plugin too, but if you want to implement this using WP’s search function, here’s the code I’m using in my Atom theme:

   // search all taxonomies, based on: http://projects.jesseheap.com/all-projects/wordpress-plugin-tag-search-in-wordpress-23
   
   function atom_search_where($where){
     global $wpdb;
     if (is_search())
       $where .= "OR (t.name LIKE '%".get_search_query()."%' AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_status = 'publish')";
     return $where;
   }
   
   function atom_search_join($join){
     global $wpdb;
     if (is_search())
       $join .= "LEFT JOIN {$wpdb->term_relationships} tr ON {$wpdb->posts}.ID = tr.object_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->term_taxonomy} tt ON tt.term_taxonomy_id=tr.term_taxonomy_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->terms} t ON t.term_id = tt.term_id";
     return $join;
   }
   
   function atom_search_groupby($groupby){
     global $wpdb;
   
     // we need to group on post ID
     $groupby_id = "{$wpdb->posts}.ID";
     if(!is_search() || strpos($groupby, $groupby_id) !== false) return $groupby;
   
     // groupby was empty, use ours
     if(!strlen(trim($groupby))) return $groupby_id;
   
     // wasn't empty, append ours
     return $groupby.", ".$groupby_id;
   }
   
   add_filter('posts_where','atom_search_where');
   add_filter('posts_join', 'atom_search_join');
   add_filter('posts_groupby', 'atom_search_groupby');
   

   It’s based on the Tag-Search plugin: http://projects.jesseheap.com/all-projects/wordpress-plugin-tag-search-in-wordpress-23

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2. Is this the standard WordPress search? Because that doesn’t seem to include taxonomies (not even standard, like categories and tags) in the search. The code searches in post_title and post_content, but if you want to include anything else you should hook into the posts_search filter.

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3. I tried the solution of Onetrickpony above https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/5404/37612, which is great, but I found one issue there, which did not work for me, and I would make one small modification:

   1. if I searched for a string in the title of the taxonomy – it works great

   2. if the taxonomy has special characters e.g. with german “Umlauts” (ö,ä,ü) and one searches for oe, ae, ue insteda of using the special char – you need to add the search in the slug of the taxonomy –
      OR t.slug LIKE '%".get_search_query()."%'

   3. if you search for a combination of a search query and a taxonomy filter – this also works fine

   4. But the problem is, when you try to use only the taxonomy filter – the search hook append an empty string to the query if no text is searched for, and for that reason you get ALL posts in the result, instead of only those from the filtered taxonomy.
      A simple IF statement solves the problem. So the whole modified code would be this (works perfectly fine for me!)

   function custom_search_where($where){ 
     global $wpdb;
     if (is_search() && get_search_query())
       $where .= "OR ((t.name LIKE '%".get_search_query()."%' OR t.slug LIKE '%".get_search_query()."%') AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_status = 'publish')";
     return $where;
   }
   
   function custom_search_join($join){
     global $wpdb;
     if (is_search()&& get_search_query())
       $join .= "LEFT JOIN {$wpdb->term_relationships} tr ON {$wpdb->posts}.ID = tr.object_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->term_taxonomy} tt ON tt.term_taxonomy_id=tr.term_taxonomy_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->terms} t ON t.term_id = tt.term_id";
     return $join;
   }
   
   function custom_search_groupby($groupby){
     global $wpdb;
   
     // we need to group on post ID
     $groupby_id = "{$wpdb->posts}.ID";
     if(!is_search() || strpos($groupby, $groupby_id) !== false || !get_search_query()) return $groupby;
   
     // groupby was empty, use ours
     if(!strlen(trim($groupby))) return $groupby_id;
   
     // wasn't empty, append ours
     return $groupby.", ".$groupby_id;
   }
   
   add_filter('posts_where','custom_search_where');
   add_filter('posts_join', 'custom_search_join');
   add_filter('posts_groupby', 'custom_search_groupby');
   

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4. I found the answer from onetrickpony to be great but it treats any search as a single term and also won’t deal with a search phrase enclosed with quotation marks. I modified his code (specifically, the atom_search_where function) a bit to deal with these two situations. Here is my modified version of his code:

   // search all taxonomies, based on: http://projects.jesseheap.com/all-projects/wordpress-plugin-tag-search-in-wordpress-23
   
   function atom_search_where($where){ 
       global $wpdb, $wp_query;
       if (is_search()) {
           $search_terms = get_query_var( 'search_terms' );
   
           $where .= " OR (";
           $i = 0;
           foreach ($search_terms as $search_term) {
               $i++;
               if ($i>1) $where .= " AND";     // --- make this OR if you prefer not requiring all search terms to match taxonomies
               $where .= " (t.name LIKE '%".$search_term."%')";
           }
           $where .= " AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_status = 'publish')";
       }
     return $where;
   }
   
   function atom_search_join($join){
     global $wpdb;
     if (is_search())
       $join .= "LEFT JOIN {$wpdb->term_relationships} tr ON {$wpdb->posts}.ID = tr.object_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->term_taxonomy} tt ON tt.term_taxonomy_id=tr.term_taxonomy_id INNER JOIN {$wpdb->terms} t ON t.term_id = tt.term_id";
     return $join;
   }
   
   function atom_search_groupby($groupby){
     global $wpdb;
   
     // we need to group on post ID
     $groupby_id = "{$wpdb->posts}.ID";
     if(!is_search() || strpos($groupby, $groupby_id) !== false) return $groupby;
   
     // groupby was empty, use ours
     if(!strlen(trim($groupby))) return $groupby_id;
   
     // wasn't empty, append ours
     return $groupby.", ".$groupby_id;
   }
   
   add_filter('posts_where','atom_search_where');
   add_filter('posts_join', 'atom_search_join');
   add_filter('posts_groupby', 'atom_search_groupby');
   

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5. I have the same level of information like Jan. I know it’s possible to extend search with plugins as well.

   Probably Search Everything (WordPress Plugin) is what you are looking for. According to the feature list, it now supports custom taxonomies.

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6. I have the same problem going on with the WooCommerce cart plugin.. My search results are not including the custom taxonomy term, ‘product_tag’, because it not a standard post tag. I found a solution in this other StackOverflow thread about the matter:

   https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13491828/how-to-amend-wordpress-search-so-it-queries-taxonomy-terms-and-category-terms

   The code example by tkelly worked for me when replacing the term author in his example with product_tag as per our needs for the cart plugins.

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