[Resolved] How to disable the search in view using blank?

[Author]

Posts

[Tai Chang]

I create a view with search field using custom post field. I want to ensure the user to enter something to see the search result, and disable the blank (default means search ALL) in search of the view. How can I do it?

[Christian Cox]

Hello, I understand you would like to display no search results until your site visitors enter something in a custom field filter. You could do this with a custom code snippet that implements our Views Filter API to display no results until some filter content is applied. This PHP snippet can be added to your child theme's functions.php file, or to a new custom code snippet in Toolset > Settings > Custom Code. If you use Toolset's custom code features, set the snippet to run everywhere and activate the snippet.

I have an example snippet available that will cause the View to display the "No items found" message until the visitor enters some kind of value in the custom field filter:

/**
 * No initial results until a filter has been applied
 * Tests for one specific custom field search filter
 * Reference: https://toolset.com/forums/topic/how-to-disable-the-search-in-view-using-blank/
 */
function tssupp_no_initial_results( $query_results, $view_settings, $view_id ){

  $target_views = array( 123, 456 );
  $field_slug = 'field-slug';

  // you should not edit below this line

  if ( in_array( $view_id, $target_views ) ) {
    // blank search indicates just blank space in the filter
    $blank_search = isset($query_results->query['meta_query']) && sizeof($query_results->query['meta_query']) == 2 && $query_results->query['meta_query'][0]['key'] == 'wpcf-'.$field_slug && trim($query_results->query['meta_query'][0]['value']) == '';
    // if there is no search term set, drop all results
    if ( !isset( $query_results->query['meta_query'] ) || $blank_search ) {
      $query_results->posts = array();
      $query_results->post_count = 0;
      $query_results->found_posts = 0;
    }
  }

  return $query_results;
}
add_filter( 'wpv_filter_query_post_process', 'tssupp_no_initial_results', 10, 3 );

You will replace 123, 456 with the numeric ID of the View where you want to apply this filter. If there is more than one View where you want to apply this filter, you can use a comma-separated list of View IDs here instead. You will replace field-slug with the slug of the custom field used for filtering.

Let me know if this code is not working as expected and I can take a closer look.

[Tai Chang]

Hi Christian

Thanks for your kind and timely support.

I follow your instruction to add the codes into toolset custom code snippet. It works for the views which I created inside the WordPress pages.

However, it does not work for the WordPress archive of toolset, even though I include the WordPress archives ID into the codes.

Can you further help on the WordPress archive blank search issue? Thanks!

[Christian Cox]

Okay I understand, unfortunately the PHP Filters we have available only impact the results of Views. We do not provide a similar filter to perform the same type of adjustments in WP Archives. I believe you would need a custom code solution for archives that falls outside the scope of support we offer here, using the built-in WordPress API pre_get_posts as shown in another example:
https://facetwp.com/how-to-customize-archive-queries/

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/pre_get_posts/

[Tai Chang]

My issue is resolved now. Thank you!