tommcd

Have also added a list for commonly spoken world languages:
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/332938

This post has been really useful to me in putting together a much more complicated search which takes on multiple query variables.

// Search build

					// Put form input into values
				  $venue_search_value = $_REQUEST['venue'] ;
				  $date_search_value = $_REQUEST['date'] ;
				  $keyword_search_value = $_REQUEST['keywords'] ;
				  $order_results_by_value = $_REQUEST['orderby'] ;

				// If not a search do nothing
				if ( $venue_search_value == '' && $date_search_value == '' && $keyword_search_value == '' ) {
					} else {

					// Start building query string

		if($venue_search_value == '') {
			$venue_search_query = '' ;
		} else {
			$venue_search_query = "AND venue.meta_value = '$venue_search_value'" ;
		}

		if($date_search_value == '') {
			$date_search_query = '' ;
		} else {
			$date_search_query = "AND starttime.meta_value LIKE '$date_search_value%' " ;
		}

// todo: find a way to search post title and post meta by keyword.
		if($keyword_search_value == '') {
			$keyword_search_query = '' ;
		} else {
			$keyword_search_query = "AND $wpdb->posts.post_content  LIKE '%$keyword_search_value%'
				OR $wpdb->posts.post_title LIKE '%$keyword_search_value%'
				OR $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value LIKE '%$keyword_search_value%' " ;
			" ;
		}

		if ($order_results_by_value == 'date') {
			$order_search_query = "starttime.meta_value" ;
		} elseif ($order_results_by_value == 'title') {
			$order_search_query = "$wpdb->posts.post_title" ;
		} else {
			$order_search_query = "starttime.meta_value" ;
		}

						// Query the database for the posts
						$query_string = "
						SELECT *
						FROM $wpdb->posts
						LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id)
						LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta AS starttime ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = starttime.post_id AND starttime.meta_key = 'Start time')
						LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta AS venue ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = venue.post_id AND venue.meta_key = 'Venue')
						WHERE $wpdb->posts.post_parent = $post->ID
						$venue_search_query
						$date_search_query
						$keyword_search_query
						AND $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish'
						AND $wpdb->posts.post_type = 'page'
						ORDER BY $order_search_query ASC
						";

You’ll have to forgive my awful PHP markup – I’m pretty new to this!

My main problem is with the $keyword_search_query variable. I need to search the Post Title, Post Content and all the Custom Fields Values for the user inputted $keyword_search_value .

However using the AND argument means all these SQL columns need to contain this argument (I only need one of them to contain it for SQL to return it as a result). Whereas using the OR argument in it’s place means all the other AND arguments previously given are all ignored.

Any help would be very much appreciated