How to query an out put value?

Question

I have this custom query that Im working on and I need to be able to query output values as well as actual stored values.

Example:

$string = "This is #*&^% a test";
$string = preg_replace('/[^(\x20-\x7F)]*/','', $string);
$string_clean = $string

So if I echo $string_clean, I'll get this:

This is a test

Which is fine, but the issue is that the $string_clean value isn't a stored value (just an output), so I dont know how to use its value in a query, being that the query results are based on stored database values.

Im using a multi array capability of the wordpress query (here). Basically, I use two keys in the array with AND as the meta_compare.

Ideally, I would like to be able to query both value (stored and output). Im interested in this as a search functionality for my query.

Can someone help me with this? How do I do it?. Or if someone knows of a better solution please let me know.

UPDATE:

This is the code that Im working with. I couldn't find any reliable solutions to implement REGEXP. Basically, what this should do, in theory, is use the php preg_replace function to remove/replace any special characters in the string and query the new clean string, that will then be used in the query's argument. Here it is:

*The initial value of the variable are submitted through a simple html form (not included).

if(isset($_POST['providername'])) {

    $providername = $_POST['providername'];

    if (preg_match('/[\'^£$%&*()}{@#~?><>,|=_+¬-]/', $providername))
        {
            $clean = $providername; 

            // Replace other special chars
            $specialCharacters = array(
            ',' => '',
            '&amp' => 'and',
            '@' => 'at',
            '.' => '',
            '+' => '',
            '=' => '',
            '/' => '',
            '*' => '',
            '!' => '',
            '(' => '',
            ')' => '',
            '$' => '',
            '#' => '',
            '%' => '',
            '\'' => '',
            '_' => '',
            '^' => '',
            '-' => ''
            );

            while (list($character, $replacement) = each($specialCharacters)) {
            $clean = str_replace($character, '-' . $replacement . '-', $clean);
            }

            // Remove all remaining other unknown characters
            $clean = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9\-]/', ' ', $clean);
            $clean = preg_replace('/^[\-]+/', '', $clean);
            $clean = preg_replace('/[\-]+$/', '', $clean);
            $clean = preg_replace('/[\-]{2,}/', '', $clean);

            if (preg_match('/[\'^£$%&*()}{@#~?><>,|=_+¬-]/', $providername)) {
                $providername = $clean;
            } else {
                $providername = $_POST['providername'];
            }
        }
}

if(isset($_POST['providerloc'])) {
    $provider_location = $_POST['providerloc'];
}

This is the multi array argument:

$args = array(
    'count_total' => true,
    'role' => 'subscriber',
    'offset' => 8,
    'number' => 8,
    'meta_query' => array(
    'relation' => 'AND',
        array(
            'key' => 'jabber',
            'value' => $provider_location,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ) ,
        array(
            'key' => 'keywordcontent',
            'value' => $providername,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        )
      )
);

After testing this solution, I get no results when trying to search for the "clean" outputted value.

For example:

If...

$value = "G-P's Workin' Barn";

After applying preg_replace, the output will be...

GPs Workin Barn

Now...if I search for "GPs Workin Barn" (the output value), I get no results. But when I search for "G-P's Workin' Barn" (the original value), it shows the result for that term. So it seems that the query isn't able to process the output value. As I thought, this makes sense because the query is searching against stored values in the database...There should be a way for the query to interpret/translate the output value and compare it against the stored value. After searching online, the closest solution that relates to what I need is the post_where filter for posts [credit @Rarst]. There doesn't seem to be a similar filter for users. Even so, I need a way to search using REGEXP against actual variable values.

Any thoughts or solutions? Thanks

Answer 1

You can try to make use of filters in query (likely posts_where) to make it look for match between clean value and MySQL REGEXP command (if it fits, didn't use it myself) with your logic, run on raw value.