Query Posts by Custom Field

Question

I'm looking to query my posts via a custom field that I've created on my page. But the custom field is an array of values. So the custom field 'country' could look like this

country => usa,africa,united kingdom,poland

What's confusing me is how to query posts with a custom field which is an array seperated with ','?

I've tried quite a few solutions on here with no success.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You can achive this using WP Query with meta_query argument as following.

$args = array (
    'post_type'              => array( 'post' ),  // YOUR POST TYPE
    'meta_query'             => array(
        array(
            'key'       => 'country',  
            'value'     => $your_country,  // THE COUNTRY TO SEARCH
            'compare'   => 'LIKE',  // TO SEARCH THIS COUNTRY IN YOUR COMMA SEPERATED STRING
            'type'      => 'CHAR',
        ),
    ),
);

// The Query
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

I have tested this query. Working perfect. Hope this might work for you as well.

Edit:

For multiple countries you can use following approach.

$countries_to_search = 'usa,africa,poland'; // YOUR COMMA SEPARATED STRING
$countries = explode( ',', $countries_to_search ); // CONVERT INTO ARRAY OF COUNTRIES
$meta_array = array();
$meta_array['relation'] = 'AND';  // DECLARE RELATION --> YOU CAN USE 'OR' AS WELL  

foreach($countries as $country){  // CREATE QUERY FOR EACH COUNTRY IN ARRAY

    $meta_array[] =  array(
        'key'       => 'country',  
        'value'     => $country,  // THE COUNTRY TO SEARCH
        'compare'   => 'LIKE',  // TO SEARCH THIS COUNTRY IN YOUR COMMA SEPERATED STRING
        'type'      => 'CHAR',
    );

}

$args = array (
        'post_type'     => array( 'post' ),  // YOUR POST TYPE
        'meta_query'    => $meta_array,  // ARRAY CONTAINING META QUERY
        );

// The Query
$query = new WP_Query( $args );