Pods Custom Fields filters

Hi,

Please, help to choose the right way for Pods data filters for my project.

(I’m an experienced SW&DB developer but for Win, thus I build this project on the high quality standards and with taking into account the big-data storing rules. But because I’m not a web-developer, I will not work with web code as php/JS/etc. Also I’m newbie at WP area.)

I need to store at WP database huge data, for example 100 additional data fields-columns of Cars specifications for about 100’000cars. And I need the filter&search possibility for EACH of 100 Cars specifications fields. Which options do I have?

1) Preset all data fields as Taxonomies. On new Car adding just chose variants from correspond taxonomy drop-down list.
It will work similar to the WooCommerce Attributes&Terms. But if I wanted a such method – I would just prefer to use the also free WooCommerce plugin. It already have grids, categories, attributes, attributes table, gallery, filters, etc. Anyway the main problem of a such method with full data preset by Taxonomies – is too high DB cross queries, because each Car specs field will need to be substitute from Taxonomies table(s) even 2 times – for Name and for Value. When you work with really big data it’s a very huge wasting of DB queries and DB time. A specially wrong to use such linked Taxonomies for the simple data as numbers and boolean, or contrary for complex-long text-varchar data, etc.
Thus I would prefer to NOT use taxonomies for such data.

2) So I prefer to store numbers/boolean/varchar/etc data (from Pods fields) at DB records-cells directly. Then how I can add filters for them (for example slider filters for numbers, checkbox filters for booleans, text search filters for varchar datas) without coding at frontend CustomPosts “Cars” archives/grids? (Similar to Products filters at WooCommerce Shop?)

3) Some data still will have the frequently recurring text values for example as Cars “Seat upholstery = leather, artificial leather, alcantara, fabric, etc”. In terms of: DB storage size, protection against accidental errors, data search optimization, etc – such fields better to save as “Numeric Value with linked correspond text decryption”. With Pods it can be made by next 2 ways:
3a) Use Pods custom Taxonomies – but it will add the same “too much DB cross queries” as I describe at (#1).
3b) Use Pods custom fields “Relationship-Simple” – which must save the same logic “Value|Description” but store descriptions only at Pods itself. But then how it’s possible to use it for filtering at frontend???

I will be grateful for any other EXACT recommendations!

• This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by johnynla.