Trouble with filters

[crebacz]

Hello--

I'm not sure if this is the right forum; however, I'm having trouble with having filters taking effect in my queries. Specifically, I am trying to limit search results by category. I have tried the following:

<?php 
$search = new WP_Query(
                                    array(
                                    's' => get_search_query(),
                                    'search_fields' => array(
                                            'post_title',
                                            'post_content',
                                            'post_excerpt',
                                        ),
                                    'post_type' => array('post','page','bulletin','policy'),
                                    'posts_per_page' => 50,
                                    'paged' => $paged,
                                    'category' => 1
                                    )
                                );
?>

I have also tried using a tax_query with category as the taxonomy. It still isn't filtering. I'm not quite sure how to begin troubleshooting this. Any pointers on where to start?

[psorensen]

Your syntax looks correct. Where are you placing this code?

[crebacz]

In search.php. the elasticsearch is returning results (I can tell because the fuzzy search is working beautifully). But for some reason, it returns all results rather than only those within a certain category or post type.

[crebacz]

So I decided to look at the query that is being sent to ElasticSearch (I basically var_dumped the $args that are being encoded into json within the search method in the EP-API class). A couple of things that I noticed:

1. There are two queries echoed when I perform a search. The first query seems to be the standard search output from Wordpress (i.e., it has the keyword, but all other fields are set to the default); the second query contains some of the arguments I passed in my query (e.g., size and post types).
2. However, neither query being sent to ElasticSearch includes the category filter, even though I set it as seen above.

Here are the two queries:

1. The first query has the search term but all else seem to be defaults (i.e. all post types and the default size of 10)

{
    "from":0,
    "size":10,
    "sort":[{
            "_score":{ "order":"desc" }
        }
    ],
    "query":{
        "bool":{
            "should":[
                {
                    "multi_match":{
                        "query":"p&p",
                        "fields":[
                            "post_title", "post_excerpt", "post_content"
                        ],
                        "boost":2
                    }
                },
                {
                    "fuzzy_like_this":{
                        "fields":[
                            "post_title","post_excerpt","post_content"
                        ],
                        "like_text":"p&p",
                        "min_similarity":0.75
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    },
    "filter":{
        "and":[{
            "terms": {
                "post_type.raw": [
                    "post","page","attachment","bulletin","policy","diagram","video"
                ]
            }
        }]
    }
}

And here is the second query that has the post_type and size arguments included, but nothing related to the category:

{
    "from":0,
    "size":50,
    "sort":[
        {
            "_score":
                {   
                    "order":"desc"
                }
        }
    ],
    "query":{
        "bool":{
            "should":[
                {"multi_match":
                    {
                        "query":"p&p",
                        "fields":[
                            "post_title","post_content","post_excerpt"
                        ],
                        "boost":2
                    }
                },
                {"fuzzy_like_this":{
                    "fields":[
                        "post_title","post_content","post_excerpt"
                    ],
                    "like_text":
                        "p&p",
                        "min_similarity":0.75
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    },
    "filter":{
        "and":[
            {
                "terms":{
                    "post_type.raw":[
                        "post","page","bulletin","policy"
                        ]
                    }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Based on psorenson's question above, I'm wondering if it is best practice to put the query inside a function and then use a 'pre_get_posts' filter on the query. It probably would remove the duplicated query. Or is it best practice to keep this type of query within the search.php file?

[psorensen]

Personally, I use a 'pre_get_posts' filter. I'd also be interested to hear how others implement this.

[tlovett1]

Hey guys, sorry the documentation was incorrect. You need to use tax_query instead of category as the query param.

[crebacz]

Thank you! The updated documentation worked beautifully for me. Appreciate your help with this. Thanks psorenson for your input.