Multiple Input Search

The m parameter means nothing to Relevanssi, and Relevanssi doesn’t look at it at all. If you want something to happen, you need to tell Relevanssi what to do with that.

The easy Relevanssi solution would be to discard the whole input field and use only one input field. Relevanssi will handle that just fine, and it’s also the easiest thing for users.

You can also concatenate the m parameter to the s parameter, which is effectively the same.

If you want more control, you can convert the m parameter to a tax_query, but that leads to trouble if the user does not enter a s parameter.

I’d go with the one-field strategy; that’s probably the most effective.

Thanks Mikko.

I understand the?m?parameter means nothing to Relevanssi, I’m basically asking what is the recommended way to handle it.

I think saying one field is the best thing for users is a fairly broad statement. There could be a thousand use cases where someone may want multiple inputs.

Would it be completely out of the plugins scope to use two inputs for the search?

I will see how it works with the concatenation. Might be worth adding some documentation to address this point as I couldn’t find anything.

Thanks for all your work on the plugin so far.

Well, I outlined the approaches you can take:

1. Discard the field, and just use one input field. This loses precision, but is easy to use and understand for users and is the easiest to set up.
2. Use both fields, but combine their contents in a filter function so that there’s two fields in the UI, but only one field in practise. Users probably won’t notice anything, and this is easy to set up.
3. Use both fields and convert the value in the m field to a taxonomy query. This has the best precision, but takes the most effort to set up. If you want to use two input fields, I would recommend this option, as otherwise it’s just better to use one input field.
4. Bonus option for Relevanssi Premium: you can use the m input field as a Relevanssi search term field, but make it only target that one specific taxonomy. This is a pretty neat option, but only available in Relevanssi Premium.

Here’s how you can do the concatenation:

add_filter( 'relevanssi_modify_wp_query', function( $query ) {
  $query->query_vars['s'] .= ' ' . $query->query_vars['m'];
  return $query;
} );

Cheers.

I tried the concatenation and it didn’t give me quite what I expected.

I’m happy to give Relevanssi Premium a go and see how that works.