Show related posts based of current ACF field name in a single page post (a loop within loop)

Question

I have a single page where I display my current post. Within the post loop, I wanna display another loop inside that shows 3 other related posts by title that share the same text as the current post from the field name "category".

Here's a sample of the code that I have as of now. I got the loop within the loop to work, but it's still not showing the related posts.

<!-- View Work -->
<section class="work-single">
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?> 
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

  <div class="row">
    <div class="medium-12 columns">
      <!-- Work Title -->
      <div class="intro">
        <h1 class="main-title"><?php echo get_the_title(); ?></h1>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <div class="work-show">
    <div class="row">

      <!-- Slide Show Image -->
      <div class="medium-12 columns">
        <img src="<?php the_field('large_image'); ?>" alt=""> 
      </div>

      <!-- Description -->
      <div class="medium-8 columns">
        <?php the_field('description'); ?>
      </div>

      <!-- Information -->
      <div class="medium-4 columns">

        <ul class="side-info">
          <li class="client"><h4><?php the_field('client'); ?></h4></li>
          <li class="date"><?php the_field('date'); ?></li>
          <li class="category"><?php the_field('category'); ?></li>
          <li class="leader"><?php the_field('leader'); ?></li>

        </ul>

        <!-- Related Posts Loop -->

        <ul>
          <li>SIMILAR CASE STUDIES</li>
          <?php 
            // args
            $args = array(
              'post_type'   => 'case-studies',
              'posts_per_page'  => 3,
              'meta_key'    => 'category',
              'orderby'   => 'meta_value',
              'order'     => 'rand'
            );

            $theposts = get_posts( $args );
            foreach($theposts as $post) :
            setup_postdata($post);
            ?>
            <li>
            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
            </li>
            <?php
            endforeach;
            wp_reset_postdata();
          ?>
        </ul>

      </div>

    </div>
  </div>

<?php endwhile; else: ?>
  <p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

Answer 1

You don't have a meta_value in your query.

From your code I can't tell what you're doing with the meta values but you should be able to do this:

// Store this BEFORE you go into the second loop.
$category = get_field('category');

// The arguments for the second loop
'post_type'   => 'case-studies',
'showposts'  => 3,
'meta_key'    => 'category',
'meta_value'   => $category,
'orderby'     => 'rand'

So what you're doing there is matching the value of the category meta key.

Ideally you would be using a taxonomy to do the above - that's what they are there for.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_taxonomy