How to create a custom search for custom post type?

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I have a search field for the blog posts, but I need an other for a custom post type. How can I create this custom search form with a different search result layout?

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8 comments

  1. Here is what I’ve tried and got a solution with 3 steps. Let’s say your custom post type is “products“

    1 . Add Function Code here you can specify the archive-search.php

    function template_chooser($template)   
{    
  global $wp_query;   
  $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');   
  if( $wp_query->is_search && $post_type == 'products' )   
  {
    return locate_template('archive-search.php');  //  redirect to archive-search.php
  }   
  return $template;   
}
add_filter('template_include', 'template_chooser');

    2 . Create search result template for custom post type ( archive-search.php )

            <?php
        /* Template Name: Custom Search */        
        get_header(); ?>             
        <div class="contentarea">
            <div id="content" class="content_right">  
                     <h3>Search Result for : <?php echo htmlentities($s, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'); ?> </h3>       
                     <?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>    
                <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="posts">        
                     <article>        
                    <h4><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h4>        
                    <p><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>        
                    <p align="right"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read     More</a></p>    
                    <span class="post-meta"> Post By <?php the_author(); ?>    
                     | Date : <?php echo date('j F Y'); ?></span>    

                    </article><!-- #post -->    
                </div>
        <?php endwhile; ?>
    <?php endif; ?>




           </div><!-- content -->    
        </div><!-- contentarea -->   
        <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
        <?php get_footer(); ?>

    1. Build Search Form
      In this Search Form, the value “products” is hidden and it will search only product posts.

       <div>   
    <h3>Search Products</h3>
    <form role="search" action="<?php echo site_url('/'); ?>" method="get" id="searchform">
    <input type="text" name="s" placeholder="Search Products"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="post_type" value="products" /> <!-- // hidden 'products' value -->
    <input type="submit" alt="Search" value="Search" />
  </form>
 </div>

    for more, I would like to link you to here
    http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-advanced-search-form-in-wordpress-for-custom-post-types/

  2. Here is what works for me. Not as clean but I couldn’t get any of these other answers to work.

    Search form for Custom Post Type:

    <form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="<?php echo home_url( '/' ); ?>">
    <label>
        <span class="screen-reader-text"><?php echo _x( 'Search for:', 'label' ) ?></span>
        <input type="search" class="search-field" placeholder="<?php echo esc_attr_x( 'Search …', 'placeholder' ) ?>" value="<?php echo get_search_query() ?>" name="s" title="<?php echo esc_attr_x( 'Search for:', 'label' ) ?>" />
        <input type="hidden" name="post_type" value="book" />
    </label>
    <input type="submit" class="search-submit" value="<?php echo esc_attr_x( 'Search', 'submit button' ) ?>" />
</form>

    In functions.php:

    function searchfilter($query) {
    if ($query->is_search && !is_admin() ) {
        if(isset($_GET['post_type'])) {
            $type = $_GET['post_type'];
                if($type == 'book') {
                    $query->set('post_type',array('book'));
                }
        }       
    }
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','searchfilter');

    In search.php:

    <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <?php if(isset($_GET['post_type'])) {
        $type = $_GET['post_type'];
           if($type == 'book') {?>

               /* Format for "book" custom post type */

           <?php } else { ?>

               /* Format for custom post types that are not "book,"
               or you can use elseif to specify a second post type the
               same way as above. Copy the default format here if you
               only have one custom post type. */

           <?php } ?>
    <?php } else { ?>

              /* Format to display when the post_type parameter
              is not set (i.e. default format) */
<?php } ?>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>

/* What to display if there are no results. */

<?php endif; ?>

    Naturally in all three places you’ll need to replace “book” with your custom post type.

    Hope this helps someone!

  3. A short code more actualized 

     function template_chooser($template)   
{    
  global $wp_query; 
  $post_type = $wp_query->query_vars["pagename"];   
  if( isset($_GET['s']) && $post_type == 'products' )   
  {

    return locate_template('archive-search.php');  //  redirect to archive-search.php
  }   
  return $template;   
}
add_filter('template_include', 'template_chooser');

  4. I was looking to use two different forms for my normal searches and my searches on a custom post type.

    My custom post type uses a different header than normal pages, on my normal page, the call to my search form is:

    <?php get_search_form(true); ?>

    And the call to my search form in the custom post type header is:

    <?php get_template_part('search','library'); ?>

    Which has an additional field:

    <input type="hidden" name="post_type" value="library" /> //Where "library" is my custom post type.

    In the functions file I have the following code that you have provided.

    /** Custom Search for Library */
function search_library($template)   
{    
  global $wp_query;   
  $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');   
  if( $wp_query->is_search && $post_type == 'library' )   
  {
    return locate_template('search-library.php');  //  redirect to archive-search.php
  }   
  return $template;   
}
add_filter('template_include', 'search_library');

    Which detects if the search form is doing a search within custom fields, thus showing the search in a custom template, otherwise use the normal template.

    Edit: fixed the get_search_form() function call which would have returned true no matter what.

  5. To fix the empty input search issue you can substitute the function code with this:

    function template_chooser($template)   
{    
 global $wp_query;   
 $post_type = get_query_var('post_type');   
 if( isset($_GET['s']) && $post_type == 'products' )   
 {
  return locate_template('archive-search.php');  //  redirect to archive-search.php
 }   
 return $template;   
}
add_filter('template_include', 'template_chooser');

  6. On a WooCommerce (product post type) search case,
    just copy the woocommerce/templates/archive-product.php file to your child theme and then customize it… 1hour for this!! 🙁

  7. I have 10 CPTs each with it’s own search result page (different layouts each) and using this was not working for me.

    After more digging, I found this this approach where you condition the search.php template to load another template if there is a CPT in the URL.

    basically in search.php you insert this:

    <?php

// check to see if there is a post type in the URL
if ( isset( $_GET['post_type'] ) && $_GET['post_type'] ) {

// save it for later
$post_type = $_GET['post_type'];

// check to see if a search template exists
if ( locate_template( 'search-' . $post_type . '.php' ) ) {
    // load it and exit
    get_template_part( 'search', $post_type );
    exit;
}

}

?>

    and the search form would be something like this:

    <form class="search" action="<?php echo home_url( '/' ); ?>">
  <input type="search" name="s" placeholder="Search&hellip;">
  <input type="submit" value="Search">
  <input type="hidden" name="post_type" value="kb_article">
</form>

  8. I know this is an old thread, but I use custom shortcodes in my functions.php file to enable searches tied to specific post types and in my case custom taxonomies. I use Pods for a video lecture archive by year, and wanted searches to be within that year only. This is currently working (in my functions.php):

    /*Custom search for Video Archives Year 2020 - adds shortcode [2020search] for the search*/
function video2020searchform( $form ) {

    $form = '<form role="search" method="get" id="searchform" action="' . home_url( '/' ) . '" >
    <div class="my-custom-search"><label class="screen-reader-text" for="s">' . __('Search for:') . '</label>
    <input type="hidden" name="video_year" value="video-archive-2020" />
    <input type="text" value="' . get_search_query() . '" name="s" id="s" placeholder="Search 2020 archives by speaker or keyword..." />
    <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="'. esc_attr__('Search') .'" />
    </div>
    </form>';

    return $form;
}

add_shortcode('2020search', 'video2020searchform');
// end of 2020 search form.

    I then have a page with the highlight videos from 2020, with the search form shortcode above it so users can search the rest of 2020. name="video_year" is the custom taxonomy created by Pods, the post type is also created by Pods and is called “videos”, and value="video-archive-2020" is the slug from the Pods video year I need. If you had a custom post type of “books”, a taxonomy of “book-genre” and you are trying to restrict the search to “adventure”, “book-genre” would be the ‘name’ entry and “adventure” would be the ‘value’. Hope this helps someone, and thank you to all the above answers!