Search Form with Custom Taxonomy Dropdown

Ahh I’m getting close. I forgot to add the name=”s” attribute to the <select> tag. It is added but maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Now it just simply uses the slug of the taxnomy term as a keyword.

The URL now looks like:

http://www.mydomain.com/?s=KEYWORD&s=MYTAXTERM

Perhaps I’m going about this the wrong way. How can I customize the query so that it specifically searches for keywords that match the selected taxonomy term?

I think the URL needs to formed as such:

http://www.mydomain.com/?taxonomy=TAXONOMY&term=TAXTERM&s=KEYWORD

ugh. so I thought I was done. However, this kind of search query does not work correctly.

When using a URL such as:

http://mydomain.com/?taxonomy=TAXONOMY&term=TAXTERM&s=KEYWORD

It simply ignores the term and just displays the complete list of results based on the KEYWORD.

Anybody know how to ensure that the results *only* display the items that are within that specific term?

Ok.. After much frustration and hours worth of work, I finally got it all fixed. And of course it was easier than I thought. Let us keep in mind that when searching for keywords in a specific taxonomy, it is not related to the URL. What is important is the $_GET data.

here’s my searchform.php

[Code moderated as per the Forum Rules. Please use the pastebin]

and here’s some custom code you can place in your main content area in the search.php page that I made using query_posts and the respective taxonomy array.

[Code moderated as per the Forum Rules. Please use the pastebin]

might be a little messy, but it works pretty well.

Hey there Sadhas, yes here’s what you need to do:

On your second (location) form field, you need to specify the “name” to be the slug name of your taxonomy term as a variable. For example I created a loop in my searchform.php that grabs *all* my tax terms and displays them in a drop-down as such.

<form role="search" method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>">
  <div>
    <input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" /> 

<?php
function get_terms_dropdown($taxonomies, $args){
	$myterms = get_terms($taxonomies, $args);
	$optionname = "optionname";
	$emptyvalue = "";
	$output ="<select name='".$optionname."'><option selected='".$selected."' value='".$emptyvalue."'>Select a Category</option>'";

	foreach($myterms as $term){
		$term_taxonomy=$term->YOURTAXONOMY; //CHANGE ME
		$term_slug=$term->slug;
		$term_name =$term->name;
		$link = $term_slug;
		$output .="<option name='".$link."' value='".$link."'>".$term_name."</option>";
	}
	$output .="</select>";
return $output;
}

$taxonomies = array('YOURTAXONOMY'); // CHANGE ME
$args = array('order'=>'ASC','hide_empty'=>true);
echo get_terms_dropdown($taxonomies, $args);

?>

<input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>

Then you’ll need to modify your search.php template and make sure it grabs that new name value and queries the posts that have that tax term.

<?php
global $query_string;
$termslug = $_GET['optionname'];
?>

<h2>Search Results For: <span style="font-weight: normal"><em><?php the_search_query(); ?></em></span></h2>

<?php 

if (empty($termslug)) {
	query_posts($query_string);
	if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post();
	endwhile; else:
	_e('Sorry, no listings matched your criteria or you forgot select a category.');
	endif;
} 

if (!empty($termslug)) {
         query_posts(array('YOURTAXONOMY' => $termslug) );
	if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post();
	endwhile; else:
	_e('Sorry, no listings matched your criteria or you forgot select a category.');
	endif;
}

?>

The first IF statement is for people that do not type in or select a “Location” or whatever your taxnomy term is. It will bypass that selection and query *all* posts based on whatever the user searched for.

The second IF statement will search for whatever the user typed in AND whatever tax term (location) they selected. I hope this helps and doesn’t get moderated. Good luck!