Redirecting to a post based on a GET parameter and a custom field

Question

I'm trying to redirect to a specific post based on a GET parameter. The value of the GET parameter is the value of a specific custom field.

For example:

http://somedomain.com/wordpress/?fid=xyzzy

I have this working when a post matches. But, it's not working properly when there is no match.

    add_filter('query_vars', 'fid_query_vars');
function fid_query_vars($vars) {
    // add fid to the valid list of variables
    $new_vars = array('fid');
    $vars = $new_vars + $vars;
    return $vars;
}

and

add_action('parse_request', 'fid_parse_request');
function fid_parse_request($wp) {
    // only process requests with "fid"
    if (array_key_exists('fid', $wp->query_vars) && $wp->query_vars['fid'] != '') {
        $args = array('post_type' => 'faculty_profile', 'meta_key' => 'wid', 'meta_value' => $wp->query_vars['fid'] , 'numberposts' => 1);
        $redirect_to_post = get_posts($args);
if (!empty($redirect_to_post ) ) {
        foreach ($redirect_to_post as $p) {
            $link = get_permalink($p->ID);
                        wp_redirect( $link , 301 );
            exit;
        }

        }
else {
    $url = 'http://cnn.com/';
    wp_redirect( $url , 404 );
        }

    }

I'd expect this to redirect to cnn.com with a 404 error, if there is no match. But, instead, I get the blog's homepage, with a status of 200.

Any ideas? thanks.

Answer 1

remove the else after the foreach:

add_action('parse_request', 'fid_parse_request');
function fid_parse_request($wp) {
    // only process requests with "fid"
    if (array_key_exists('fid', $wp->query_vars) && $wp->query_vars['fid'] != '') {
        $args = array('post_type' => 'faculty_profile', 'meta_key' => 'wid', 'meta_value' => $wp->query_vars['fid'] , 'numberposts' => 1);
        $redirect_to_post = get_posts($args);
        if (!empty($redirect_to_post ) ) {
            foreach ($redirect_to_post as $p) {
                $link = get_permalink($p->ID);
                wp_redirect( $link , 301 );
                exit;
            }
        }
        $url = 'http://cnn.com/';
        wp_redirect( $url , 404 );
        exit;
    }else{
        return $wp;
    }
}