meta post search

Question

I need to query post meta fields, filtered by a multi checkbox

Currently, the query works only with second parameter (People) when the form is submitted.

How can I filter with two parameters?

HTML (Form submit)

<input type="checkbox" id="inlineCheckbox1"  name="category[]" value="Planet">
<input type="checkbox" id="inlineCheckbox2" name="category[]" value="People">

PHP (Search)

                $category = $_GET['category'];

                $category_planet = $category[0];
                $category_people = $category[1];

                $argsearch      = array();                    
                $argsearch["post_type"] = "projects";
                $argsearch['showposts'] = -1;

                if( $advtext!="" ){
                    $advtxtQuery ="select ID from $wpdb->posts
                    LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ON $wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id where {$wpdb->posts}.post_status = 'publish'  ";
                    $where =" (( post_typs LIKE 'projects') AND ( post_title LIKE '%".$advtext."%')) ";
                    $where .=" AND ( $wpdb->postmeta.meta_key = '_cmb_project_category' AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value LIKE '%".$advtext."%')";
                    $mypostids = $wpdb->get_col($advtxtQuery." AND ( ".$where." )" );


                    if(count($mypostids)>0){
                        $argsearch['post__in']=$mypostids;
                    }else{
                        $argsearch["s"] = $advtext;
                    }

                }

                if( $category_planet!="" ){
                    if(!isset($argsearch["meta_query"])){
                        $argsearch["meta_query"] = array();
                    }
                    $argsearch["meta_query"][] = array(
                            'key' => '_cmb_project_category',
                            'value' => $category_planet,
                            'compare' => 'LIKE'
                    );

                }


                if( $category_people!="" ){
                     if(!isset($argsearch["meta_query"])){
                          $argsearch["meta_query"] = array();
                     }
                     $argsearch["meta_query"][] = array(
                               'key' => '_cmb_project_category',
                               'value' => $category_people,
                               'compare' => 'LIKE'
                     );

                }

                global $wp_query, $post,$wpdb;
                $query =  new WP_Query($argsearch);
                while($query->have_posts()):
                    $query->next_post();
                $project_list = $query->post->ID;
?> 

Answer 1

You have a typo in your $advtxtQuery query-- $where =" (( post_typs LIKE 'projects')...

For the rest, both queries are searching on the same key so use IN instead of trying to create two separate arrays, as in the Codex example below:

 $args = array(
   'post_type' => 'my_custom_post_type',
   'meta_key' => 'age',
   'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
   'order' => 'ASC',
   'meta_query' => array(
       array(
           'key' => 'age',
           'value' => array(3, 4),
           'compare' => 'IN',
       )
   )
 );
 $query = new WP_Query($args);

You could just pass your $category as is but I'd filter it for maliciousness. In fact, your values are (or seem to be) static so the safest thing is to do this:

$category_args = array();
if(!empty($category[0])) $category_args[] = "Planet";
if(!empty($category[1])) $category_args[] = "People";

And pass that into your query like so:

if( !empty($category_args) ){
  if(!isset($argsearch["meta_query"])){
      $argsearch["meta_query"] = array();
  }
  $argsearch["meta_query"][] = array(
      'key' => '_cmb_project_category',
      'value' => $category_args,
      'compare' => 'IN'
  );
}