Get posts based on meta key/value

Question

I have a custom post type "custom_author" which is selected when making a new post using a metabox dropdown with field key "chosen_author".

This is what my wp_postmeta looks like:

Where 13088 is the blog post that has "author" 13112 assigned to it.

I am trying to get all posts by a particular author using the following:

$args = array(
        'post_type'     => 'post',
        'post_status'   => 'publish',
        'meta_query' => array(
            array(
                'key' => 'chosen_author',
                'value' => '13112' (tried with and without quotes)
            )
        )
    );

    $getPosts = new WP_Query($args);

But it just returns ALL my posts.

I did some debugging:

$getPosts = new WP_Query($args);
echo $GLOBALS['wp_query']->request;

and that output

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND (wp_posts.post_author != 0) AND wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'private') ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 10

Completely ignoring the meta_query array!

If it matters this being used outside the loop

Answer 1

The problem

It looks like you are saving the data as:

$a = array( "13112" );
update_post_meta( $post_id, "article_author", $a);

where this will give you the meta_value

a:1:{i:0;s:5:"13112";}

Your first query will give you escaped quotes:

LIKE '%\"13112\"%'

Method 1

If you save the author array with numbers instead:

$a = array( 13112 );
update_post_meta( $post_id, "article_author", $a);

then the corresponding meta_value will be

a:1:{i:0;i:13112;}

So when you try the meta query:

 'meta_query' => array(
            array(
                'key' => 'article_author',
                'value' => ':13112;',
                'compare' => 'LIKE'
            )
    )

the corresponding SQL part will be

LIKE '%:13112;%'

You could try to use this instead.

Method 2

Another way is to remove the escaped quotes with non-escaped quotes:

add_filter('posts_where','my_posts_where');
$getPosts = new WP_Query($args);
remove_filter('posts_where','my_posts_where');

where

function my_posts_where($where){    
    $where = str_replace('\"', '"', $where);    
    return $where;  
}

but I don't reccomend it.

Answer 2

Fixed by using

get_posts($args) instead of new WP_Query($args);

No idea why...