Multiple selection for categories during search

Well it would be really helpful if someone can point me towards a direction.

Somebody? I also want to know how to not show any result if the form is not filled up. I don’t mean a jQuery popup or something, I want to show “No results found” or something similar.

I think I found out how to stop /event/ page stop showing result if it is not a search request , using file \wp-content\plugins\events-manager\templates\templates\events-list.php

I am still left with increasing the amount of categories someone can search for .

Right now for the events search page the users select date, name, location and category .
Then can only select one category but what I want is to let them choose multiple categories.

To carry out a search, a person must be able to narrow results by selecting categories of interest.
Currently one can only select a single category, but I want it to allow multiple category selections.

By adding

$(function() {

$('.em-events-search-category').attr('size','15');
$('.em-events-search-category').attr('multiple','');
});

in the header I achieved the layout I wanted after using the code I was able to select multiple categories but the output I am getting is based only upon one of my selections not all of them.
Can you tell me in which file is the actual sql querie made after accepting the form paramaters , maybe I’ll be able to figure something out.

Thanks

The /tempates/templates/events-search.php has the following code for the Category Search select box.

<?php
				$selected = !empty($_REQUEST['category']) ? $_REQUEST['category'] : 0;
				EM_Object::ms_global_switch(); //in case in global tables mode of MultiSite, grabs main site categories, if not using MS Global, nothing happens
				wp_dropdown_categories(array( 'hide_empty' => 0, 'orderby' =>'name', 'name' => 'category', 'hierarchical' => true, 'taxonomy' => EM_TAXONOMY_CATEGORY, 'selected' => $selected, 'show_option_none' => get_option('dbem_search_form_categories_label'), 'class'=>'em-events-search-category'));
				EM_Object::ms_global_switch_back(); //if switched above, switch back
			?>

I only know how to dropdown category which is using wp_dropdown_categories, I don’t know how to allow multiple selection in it , so I added

$(function() {

$('.em-events-search-category').attr('size','15');
$('.em-events-search-category').attr('multiple','');
});

to the head of /tempates/templates/events-search.php.

Now the /events/ page allow me to select multiple categories.
This the post data
POSTDATA=em_search=&scope%5B0%5D=2013-09-12&scope%5B1%5D=2013-09-28&category=18&category=16&category=9&category=20&state=&town=&action=search_events
as you can see there are multiple parameters here names ‘category’ now,
so your code:

$args['category'] = implode(",", $_REQUEST['category']);
echo EM_Events::output( $args );

wouldn’t work.

When I did var_dump($args); I got :
["owner"]=> bool(false) ["pagination"]=> bool(false) ["orderby"]=> string(44) "event_start_date,event_start_time,event_name" ["order"]=> string(3) "ASC" ["em_search"]=> string(0) "" ["scope"]=> string(21) "2013-09-12,2013-09-28" ["category"]=> string(2) "20"
which means only the last category parameter is getting counted ,then I tried

$mm = wp_parse_args( $mm, $args['category'] );
		echo $mm;

which didn’t gave me any output .

So, basically the frontend is sending the parameters but the backend is not receiving it or maybe I am wrong somewhere.

Any ideas ?

P.S. As I am doing this on an offline version right now I am making changes directly to the plugin but when I’ll put it online I will be using update safe templates.

Thanks

Hi ,

My comments:

need to output a proper multiple-select feed on the search form

The data is being sent anyways.
POSTDATA=em_search=&scope%5B0%5D=2013-09-12&scope%5B1%5D=2013-09-28&category=18&category=16&category=9&category=20&state=&town=&action=search_events

I think what angelo_nwl presumed was that the data was sent like
category=18,16,9,20 but it was sent like
category=18&category=16&category=9&category=20

multiple-select feed on the search form

Do you know how to make it in the template ? wp_dropdown_categories will make only simple dropdown categories.

I think what angelo_nwl presumed was that the data was sent like
category=18,16,9,20 but it was sent like
category=18&category=16&category=9&category=20

Yes but the former is what you need to have sent. The latter is invalid and simply won’t work.

Ok, Can you help me code the multiple select box without using jquery ?