Custom Post Types: pretty search URLs and has_archive

Question

This is a question based on the comments from the answer here.

I'm using the following code to create a couple of different search boxes for my website:

<form action="<?php echo home_url( '/glossary/' ); ?>" method="get">
    <p style="font-size:12px;">SEARCH<strong class="dkblue">GLOSSARY</strong></p>
    <input type="text" name="s" value="" />
    <input type="submit" value="GO" class="glossary_submit" />
</form>

<form id="profilesearch" action="<?php echo home_url( '/species/' ); ?>" method="get">
    <input type="text" size="50" class="default-value" value="SEARCH" name="s" />
    <input type="submit" value="GO" class="profilesearch_submit" />
    <!-- <p class="tinysearch"><a href="/dev/advanced-search/">ADVANCED SEARCH</a></p> -->
    <input type="checkbox" name="showthumbnails" id="showthumbnails" class="checkbox" <?php if ($_POST["showthumbnails"] == "on") { echo 'checked="checked" '; } ?>/><label for="showthumbnails">HIDE THUMBNAILS</label>
</form>

My glossary CPT has the following creation $args:

$args = array(
  'labels' => $labels,
  'public' => true,
  'publicly_queryable' => true,
  'exclude_from_search' => true,    
  'show_ui' => true,
  'show_in_menu' => true,
  'query_var' => true,
  'capability_type' => 'post',
  'has_archive' => false,
  'hierarchical' => true,
  'menu_position' => 40,
  'menu_icon' => $this->plugin_url . 'images/glossary.png',
  'supports' => array('title','editor','thumbnail','page-attributes')
);

And my species CPT has these:

$args = array(
  'labels' => $labels,
  'public' => true,
  'publicly_queryable' => true,
  'show_ui' => true,
  'show_in_menu' => true,
  'query_var' => true,
  'has_archive' => true,
  'capability_type' => 'post',
  'has_archive' => true,
  'hierarchical' => false,
  'menu_position' => 5,
  'menu_icon' => $this->plugin_url . 'images/fish20.png',
  'supports' => array('author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','revisions')
);

Currently, when I submit a search from the glossary form, the URL changes to: /glossary/?s=term. When I submit a search from the species form, the URL changes to: /search/term.

The glossary URL does what it's meant to do - searches for glossary CPT types only. The species URL however simply searches for everything.

If I change has_archive to false, the searches work as per the above glossary. If I change it to true, the searches work as per the above species.

What I want both to do is this: change URL to /search/cpt-slug/term, i.e. /search/species/bettas and search for only posts with that CPT.

Have I done something wrong with my $args?

Answer 1

Most unfortunate, while my original solution was elegant I did not foresee this complication, and I apologise for the inconvenience.

So, I provide an alternative solution.

Firstly to get your fancy search query:

Your markup will need to change, but this will intercept the URLs and rewrite them correctly internally, it is similar to the other answer but prettier, faster, easier to read, and in a single function

function custom_rewrite( $wp_rewrite ) {
    $feed_rules = array(
        'search/(.+)/(.+)'      =>  'index.php?post_type='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(1).'&s=' . $wp_rewrite->preg_index(2)
    );
    $wp_rewrite->rules = $feed_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
}
// refresh/flush permalinks in the dashboard if this is changed in any way
add_filter( 'generate_rewrite_rules', 'custom_rewrite' );

Thus example.com/search/post/bannana will search all posts of type 'post' for bannana.

If you would prefer instead not to 'search' but to instead show a term, all you need to do is modify the query variables in the rewrite rule.

You can use the monkeyman rewrite rules analyser plugin to help you, by putting in URLs and being shown which rewrite rule handles it and the priority/order of said rules

BUT

However, you will not be able to use the elegant html markup to use these URLs, it will not play nicely, you will need to modify where the forms is submitted to which means while this might sound like a marvellous idea, in practice the implementation means you will need at least 1 redirect for a searchbox to work with these URLs, which is not ideal at all.

For your species search problem

Also modify your species registration to be more specific/accurate:

$args = array(
  'labels' => $labels,
  'public' => true,
  'publicly_queryable' => true,
  'exclude_from_search' => false, // lets not guess what this will be, lets be authorative
  'show_ui' => true,
  'show_in_menu' => true,
  'query_var' => true,
  'has_archive' => true,
  'capability_type' => 'post',
  'has_archive' => true,
  'hierarchical' => false,
  'menu_position' => 5,
  'menu_icon' => $this->plugin_url . 'images/fish20.png',
  'supports' => array('author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','revisions')
);

But, while this might fix it, I suspect not. Rereading your question, I see it rewrites to /search/term, but WordPress does not do this by default. I suspect you have code somewhere else that rewrites search terms into a prettier version for general post searches, but this is interfering, be it because of the order of where its added in the code or something else.

Since I can't see your entire codebase, and I'm not sure what this search code prettification looks like, I can't help you any further than to point you in its directions ( and to conditionally rewrite if post_type is not set rather than always).

edit: give this a try:

function custom_rewrite( $wp_rewrite ) {
    $feed_rules = array(
        'species/(.+?)(/[0-9]+)?/?$'      =>  'index.php?post_type=species&species='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(1).'&page='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(2)
    );
    $wp_rewrite->rules = $feed_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
}
// refresh/flush permalinks in the dashboard if this is changed in any way
add_filter( 'generate_rewrite_rules', 'custom_rewrite' );

Answer 2

You'll have to work on permalinks. I don't have time at the moment but you can find some info here: http://shibashake.com/wordpress-theme/wordpress-permalink-add

Here's some code to get you started, it's based on another article that was taken down, I can't guarantee it will work.

add_filter('wp_loaded','bfr_add_permastruct');
add_filter('rewrite_rules_array','bfr_add_permalink_rule');

function bfr_add_permastruct(){
    add_permastruct('ctp_search', 'search/%post-type%/%postname%');

  //Remember to flush_rules() when for the first time 
  //$wp_rewrite->flush_rules();
}

// Adding a new rule
function bfr_add_permalink_rule($rules)
{
    $newrules = array();
    $newrules['search/([^/]+)/([^/]+)?$'] = 'index.php?post_type=$matches[1]name=$matches[2]';
    return $newrules + $rules;
}

Answer 3

Thanks to Tom, I've worked out what my problem was...!

I found this little nugget in my functions.php. Must've been from literally a year ago as I don't even remember putting it in!

add_action( 'template_redirect', 'my_rewrite' );
function my_rewrite() {

    if ( is_search() and false === strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/search/' ) ) {
        wp_redirect( get_bloginfo( 'home' ) . '/search/' . str_replace( ' ', '+', str_replace( '%20', '+', get_query_var( 's' ) ) ) );
        exit();
    }

}

This was causing my /species/search/ to fail. Replacing it with this has done the trick:

add_action( 'template_redirect', 'my_rewrite' );
function my_rewrite() {

    if ( is_search() and false === strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/search/' ) ) {
        if ( strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/species/' ) )
            wp_redirect( get_bloginfo( 'home' ) . '/species/search/' . str_replace( ' ', '+', str_replace( '%20', '+', get_query_var( 's' ) ) ) );
        else if ( strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/glossary' ) )
            wp_redirect( get_bloginfo( 'home' ) . '/glossary/search/' . str_replace( ' ', '+', str_replace( '%20', '+', get_query_var( 's' ) ) ) );
        else
            wp_redirect( get_bloginfo( 'home' ) . '/search/' . str_replace( ' ', '+', str_replace( '%20', '+', get_query_var( 's' ) ) ) );

        exit();
    }

}

Next up, I had to change has_archive to true on my glossary CPT.

Finally, I used Tom's rewrite rules and some knowledge from this excellent post to get my pretty URLs working:

/* --- rewrite rules for searches...*/
function custom_rewrite( $wp_rewrite ) {
    $species = array(
        '(species|glossary)/search/(.+?)(/page/([0-9]+))?/?$'      =>  'index.php?post_type='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(1).'&s='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(2).'&paged='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(4)
    );  

    $wp_rewrite->rules = $species + $wp_rewrite->rules;
}
// refresh/flush permalinks in the dashboard if this is changed in any way
add_filter( 'generate_rewrite_rules', 'custom_rewrite' );

I now have working pretty URLs on my custom post type searches, AND pagination: /species/search/term, /species/search/term/page/2/ and /glossary/search/term, etc. all work correctly.

Thanks Tom, credit goes to you!