multi custom fields and taxonomy search

Question

we have a couple of custom meta boxes for product (custom post type). one custom meta box key is area_required_width, and we have numbers input for it when publishing products, now we want to have a dropdown including <5, 5-10, 10-20, 20-50, >50 to search this key value of area_required_width at frontend for users.

I know that we can use custom WP_query to search if at backend we store ranges instead of input numbers as frontend. the thing is that our data stores is numbers we input while search criteria is different ranges like <5, 5-10 ...

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I fully understand what you're trying to do, but I always recommend the Advanced Custom Fields plugin to people looking to make custom fields more useful and intuitive.

Great plugin with great support and documentation. It really opens up a lot of possibilities.

Answer 2

It's not clear from the question how you are editing the search to restrict to the meta key (but I trust you're doing it right :) ).

Anyway, WP_Query objects allow you to query posts by ranges in meta value. See Codex.

For example: (I offer this example only as an example of what the meta_query property of a WP_Query object can do. Not as a way of restricting the search query).

$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => 'price',
            'value' => array( 20, 100 ),
            'type' => 'numeric',
            'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
        )
    )
 );
$query = new WP_Query( $args );