Admin Search on Custom Fields Showing No Results

Is Relevanssi enabled in admin?

Yes, it is. I’ve tried toggling that, as well as deactivating/reactivating the plugin.

Hmm. I checked this, and it works fine. I get an URL like this:

wp-admin/edit.php?s=repeat&post_status=all&post_type=post&action=-1&m=0&cat=0&paged=1&mode=list&action2=-1

and see the posts that have the word “repeat” inside a custom field. If that doesn’t work on your site, I don’t know… How does the URL look like when you do a search that doesn’t provide the expected results?

/wp-admin/edit.php?s=5340&post_status=all&post_type=vehicles&action=-1&m=0&cpac_filter%5Bcolumn-taxonomy-2%5D&cpac_filter%5Bcolumn-taxonomy%5D&cpac_filter%5Bcolumn-taxonomy-1%5D&paged=1&action2=-1

cpac_filter –?so you’re using ACF and not regular custom fields? I don’t know if that’s going to work.

We’re using Pods and Admin Columns Pro, not ACF. Any thoughts?

I don’t know about those. Is the data you’re looking for inside a regular custom field?

Yes–it’s a normal field.

OK, in that case I don’t know why it’s not working – it certainly should be. Probably some kind of conflict with the plugins you’re using.

Ok–we’ve deactivated almost all of the plugins (we left Admin Columns Pro because we need that field) and it still didn’t work. Any other ideas?

Quick update…this only doesn’t work with one of the post types.

A little more in the way of updates… I started doing more code-debug, and found that when I dumped the query at line 256 of search.php:

if (is_array($meta_query)) {
		$meta_query_restrictions = "";

		$mq_vars = array('meta_query' => $meta_query );

		$mq = new WP_Meta_Query();
		$mq->parse_query_vars( $mq_vars );
		$meta_sql = $mq->get_sql('post', 'relevanssi', 'doc');
		$meta_join = "";
		$meta_where = "";
		if ($meta_sql) {
			$meta_join = $meta_sql['join'];
			$meta_where = $meta_sql['where'];
		}

		// $query_restrictions .= $meta_where;
	}

the query had
...AND ( ( wp_postmeta.meta_key = 'vehicle_make' AND CAST(wp_postmeta.meta_value AS CHAR) = '' )
That would absolutely cause the search to show no results. Why would it be adding in the meta_key requirement here?

Because you have a meta key sorting involved in the search. It causes a meta_key field appear in the query, and Relevanssi interprets that as a meta filter, which it isn’t.

Add a filter function on relevanssi_modify_wp_query, you can probably remove that meta query from there.

I’d love a bit more guidance–should I add that as a hook, and if so, where? Obviously not the theme, but maybe a custom plugin?

Or, even better, how do I remove if via the GUI? I don’t understand why it’s there in the first place.