Comments on: Custom Field Searching WordPress Using Sphinx

By: John Hoff

John Hoff — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:09:32 +0000

Using a serialized array does get tricky. You have to unpack part of the array in the SQL statement and only use SQL to do it. Say you are given meta_value along the lines of: custom.meta_value = "aaa,bbb,ccc"
You can unpack that and assign each piece to an sql column:

SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(custom.meta_value, ",", 1), ",", -1) as first,
SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(custom.meta_value, ",", 2), ",", -1) as second,
SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(custom.meta_value, ",", 3), ",", -1) as third,

You might also need to use TRIM to remove any quote marks. Hope that points you in the right direction.

By: Jörn

Jörn — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:49:59 +0000

Hi, thanks for this!
i have a serialized Array in one meta_value. Is there a way to make them searchable too?

By: John Hoff

John Hoff — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:47:49 +0000

My post concerned how to modify an existing plugin, Sphinx Search, to perform searches on custom fields. I have not created a plugin to handle custom fields automatically. The primary reason for this is that using custom fields heavily in a Wordpress installation already requires a lot of customization--so adding another plugin into the mix isn't really necessary.

By: kamal

kamal — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:10:06 +0000

Hi, and thanks for the info, as i’m bad in english and php :p i would like to know wher can i download you plugin?
Thanks

By: JamesD

JamesD — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:26:11 +0000

Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting

By: Andres Carvajal

Andres Carvajal — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:08:20 +0000

Hey John, this was really helpful! I don’t think there’s another site which explains how to do it.

Thank you very much,

Andres.