altering search terms

Question

How can you filter or alter the search terms that users enter into a search field? Is there a hook available?

The idea is to use this function to filter out 2-3 letter "filler" words ("on", "and", "the", etc.)

function prepSearchStr($str){
    $str=preg_replace('©[^a-zA-Z0-9]©', ' ', $str);
    $str=preg_replace('©(?<=\s|^)(([a-zA-Z]{1,3})|[0-9]{1,2})(?=\s|$)©', ' ', $str); //remove smaller groups of characters
    $exploded=explode(' ', $str);
    $exploded=array_filter($exploded);
    return implode(' ', $exploded); 
}

Answer 1

You can use parse_query:

function wpa64292_parse_query( $query ) {
    if( isset( $query->query_vars['s'] ) && !empty( $query->query_vars['s'] ) )
        $query->set( 's', prepSearchStr( $query->query_vars['s'] ) );
}

add_action( 'parse_query', 'wpa64292_parse_query' );

Note that it won't alter the query string you see in the browser, but if you echo get_query_var('s') in your template you'll see it's been altered.