How to do a partial match in Wordpress tax_query for custom taxonomy

user_3283121 0
Viewed 2266

We search in taxonomies for certain terms. The search phrase $search_data (in our example: 4000342) comes from a search form field.

The query looks like this and does work in general already, when the search phrase matches the terms exactly:

$search_data = 4000342;
$args =  array (
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'tax_query' => array(
          array(
              'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
              'field' => 'slug',
              'terms' => $search_data
          )
      ),
 );

This search show all products with the Taxonomy term 4000342.

But there are a lot of different terms that contain the search phrase (4000342) as part of the term, for example: XC-KK-4000342-8.

We want to show all products where the taxonomy term contains the search phrase.

We tried different operators in the tax_query, but none of them seem to work in this case. How do we do a partial match using tax_query?

wordpress
3 Answers

WP_Query doesn't allow for a LIKE comparison for taxonomy searches so you will need to do 2 steps:

  1. First to get a list of all the slugs that are a partial match to your search term.
  2. Then use this list in your tax_queryto search for all slugs that are an exact match to the slugs in this list.

1. Get all slugs that are a partial match

Use get_terms to get a list of all terms that include your search term $search_data.

You don't need regex - get_terms already has an argument name__like that will perform a partial match instead of a full match.

$matching_terms = get_terms( array(
    'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
    'fields' => 'slugs', // searches in the slug and returns an array of matching slugs
    'name__like' => $search_data, 
) );

This will return an array of all the slugs that partially match your search term, e.g. ('4000342', 'XC-KK-4000342-8', '123440003425').

(Note: get_terms doesn't returns terms that are empty by default. If you want to include empty terms, you can include 'hide_empty' => false in the arguments.)

2. Use this in your tax_query to search all slugs that are in this list

$args =  array (
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'tax_query' => array(
          array(
              'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
              'field' => 'slug',
              'terms' => $matching_terms
          )
      ),
 );

See more about this and other WP__Term_Query parameters here that can be passed to get_terms

user_5148780

You can do that with a regex. First you need to get all the terms :

$terms = get_terms( array(
    'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
    'field' => 'slug',
) );

Then get the regex result :

$filtered_terms = preg_grep('/' . $search_data . '/gm', $terms);

And use it in your tax query :

$args =  array (
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'tax_query' => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
            'field' => 'slug',
            'terms' => $filtered_terms
        )
    ),
);

Hope this helps.

user_114003300

You need to use relation 'OR' for showing products from both taxonomies or relation 'AND' for showing products with both taxonomies, something like this:

$args =  array (
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'tax_query' => array(
          'relation' => 'OR',
          array(
              'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
              'field' => 'slug',
              'terms' => 4000342,
          ),
          array(
              'taxonomy' => 'pa_version',
              'field' => 'slug',
              'terms' => 'XC-KK-4000342-8',
          )
      ),
 );
user_137282940
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