Custom category search box for WordPress

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I’ve seen plugins that add an additional drop down list of categories to the standard WordPress search bar, however this doesn’t really help me at all.

My site has a lot of posts in a lot of categories and what I want to do is add a large search box at the top of each category page titled ‘search [cat name]: ‘ this search box will only search the posts within the category they are currently looking at.

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To save me having to place code (and create a category page template for each category I have) it would be brilliant if this can somehow be dynamically created. So what I am aiming to achieve is this:

  1. Dynamically created search bar title
  2. A search box that only searches within the category the user is currently viewing

I have this: 

<form method="get" id="search form" action="/">
<div>
<input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="hidden" value="22" name="cat" id="africa" />
<input type="submit" id="search_submit" name="Search" value="Search"/>
</div>
</form>

But it doesn’t seem to work, nor does it dynamically fill in the category ID which means i would have to create a new category template for each category I have.

It’ll be very much appreciated if anybody could help me with this, thanks.

Post Views: 2

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1 comment

  1. In every template file of your theme, even in the header.php you can put 

    <?php
$term = null;
$btn = __('Search');
if ( is_category() ) { $term = get_queried_object(); }
?>
<form method="get" id="search_form" action="<?php echo home_url(); ?>">
<div>
<input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" />
<?php
if ($term) {
  $btn = sprintf( __('Search in %s'), $term->name);
?>
<input type="hidden" value="<?php echo $term->term_id; ?>" name="cat" />
<input type="hidden" value="<?php echo $term->name; ?>" name="catname" />
<?php } ?>
<input type="submit" id="search_submit" name="Search" value="<?php echo $btn; ?>"/>
</div>
</form>

    If you are viewing a category it will show a category restricted search, in other cases it show a generic search form.

    Then in your search.php, to dinamically output the title put something like:

    <?php
$searchtitle = isset($_GET['catname']) && ! empty($_GET['catname']) ? 
sprintf( __('Search Results for &quot;%s&quot; in category &quot;%s&quot;'), $_GET['s'], $_GET['catname']) :
sprintf( __('Search Results for &quot;%s&quot;'), $_GET['s']);
?>
<h1><?php echo $searchtitle; ?></h1>

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