Advanced Search

Question

Not sure of the best way to progress with this but i'm trying to create an advanced search on a Craft site.

What it needs is a select dropdown for Authors, Categories and a normal text input. The search options can be stacked and used singularly.

I'm trying a couple of things which I'll post here if they work but any assistance would be grand.

Here is the basics to being with.

<form class="search" action="{{ url('news/results') }}">
    <div class="col col-33">
        <label>Category</label>
        <div class="filter">
            <select name="c">
            {% set categories = craft.categories.find({ group: 'news' }) %}
                {% for category in categories %}
                <option>{{ category.title }}</option>
            {% endfor %}
            </select>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col col-33">
        <label>Keywords</label>
        <input type="text" name="q">
    </div>
    <div class="col col-33">
         <button type="submit" class="btn search">
                Begin Search
         </button>
    </div>
</form>

And then on the "search results" page for example...

{% set query = craft.request.getParam('q', 'c') %}
    {% set entries = craft.entries.search(query).order('score').section('news').limit(10) %}

        {% if entries|length %}

            {% for entry in entries %}

            {% endfor %}

        {% else %}
            <p>Your search for “{{ query }}” didn’t return any results.</p>
        {% endif %}

I know i'm probably missing something extremely obvious here as i'm sure it's fairly simple to achieve.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you can get multiple POST parameters with one getParam request (maybe it works if you request them as an array?).

What definitely works is to get the parameters separately:

{% set c = craft.request.getParam('c') %}
{% set q = craft.request.getParam('q') %}

{% set query = c ~ ' ' ~ q %}

.

Edit:

{# Request the category parameter
 --> see other answer on how to proceed with this #}
{% set catParam = craft.request.getParam('c') %}

{# Request search parameters #}
{% set searchParamQ = craft.request.getParam('q') %}
{% set searchParamR = craft.request.getParam('r') %}
{% set searchParamS = craft.request.getParam('s') %}
{% set searchParamT = craft.request.getParam('t') %}

{# Set `searchParam` before conditionals #}
{% set searchParam = '' %}

{# Add parameters with `OR` logic #}
{% set searchParam = searchParamQ ? searchParam ~ ' OR ' ~ searchParamQ : searchParam %}
{% set searchParam = searchParamR ? searchParam ~ ' OR ' ~ searchParamR : searchParam %}
{% set searchParam = searchParamS ? searchParam ~ ' OR ' ~ searchParamR : searchParam %}
{% set searchParam = searchParamT ? searchParam ~ ' OR ' ~ searchParamR : searchParam %}

{# Beautify `searchParam` #}
{% set searchParam = searchParam|trim|trim('OR ') %}

Answer 2

You should process your two POST parameters differently. One is responsible for your search parameter in your results template and the other should go into a relatedTo parameter. That's why I recommend to get them separately (it's probably not even possible to get them with a single getParam, but I'm not sure).

Here's how I'd proceed with the category parameter 'c'. For starters I'd use the category's slug as the value, just to be save.

_search.html:

{% for category in categories %}
    <option value="{{ category.slug }}">{{ category.title }}</option>
{% endfor %}

Then use that slug to grab the right category with a craft.categories ElementCriteriaModel. Use first() to get the first (and only) category model that matches the criteria and use it to compose the relation parameter. The category is the taget element because you select the category from your "News" entry and not the other way round.

_results.html:

{% set searchParam = craft.request.getParam('q') %}
{% set catSlug = craft.request.getParam('c') %}

{% set cat = craft.categories.group('news').slug(catSlug).first %}
{% set relationParam = catSlug ? {targetElement: cat} : '' %}

{% set entries = craft.entries.section('news').relatedTo(relationParam).search(searchParam) %}

{% if entries|length %}

    {% for entry in entries %}
        <p>{{ entry.title }}</p>
    {% endfor %}

{% else %}

    <p>Your search for “{{ searchParam }}” in “{{ cat.title }}” didn’t return any results.</p>

{% endif %}