Gallery layout with thumbnails

Thank you for your kind words and for your question. Thanks as well for posting the link to the topic you found in the rtMedia Community forum. That topic is a couple of years old and things have improved since it was written. In particular, the “MLA BuddyPress & rtMedia Example” example plugin has been enhanced to work with the [rtmedia_gallery] shortcode so you can use MLA to select your items and use [rtmedia_gallery] to format them for display. This update has not yet been added to the current MLA version, but I will give you instructions for getting it below.

The updated example plugin adds a custom “rtmedia=gallery” parameter that filters the items returned by the [mla_gallery] query and uses [rtmedia_gallery] to display the items that have an rtMedia ID. All you have to do is add this parameter to your [mla_gallery] shortcode and you should get the results you need.

You do not say of you are using the free version of rtMedia or if you have purchased the rtMedia Pro collection of add-ons. If, for example, you are using the “rtMedia Sorting” add-on you will need an update to that plugin to make it work with MLA. Let me know if that’s true for your application.

To get the updated example plugin you will have to download and install the latest MLA Development Version To get the Development Version, follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Shortcode not working in (special) widget

Once the Development Version is installed, navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. Type “rtmedia” in the text box and click “Search Plugins” to filter the table.

You are looking for “MLA BuddyPress & rtMedia Example” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Update” (or “Install”) rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate the new plugin as you would any other WordPress plugin. If the old plugin is still there, deactivate it.

Finally, go back to your search page and add the rtmedia=gallery parameter to your [mla_gallery] shortcode.

It would be great if you can install the Development Version and updated example plugin and let me know if they work for you. If you have any problems or further questions, post an update here and I will give you more specific help. It would be very helpful if you can post the complete source text of your search page so I can see exactly the form and shortcodes you are using.

Thanks for the good news regarding your progress and for posting the source text of your search page. I am a bit puzzled by the “echo do_shortcode” text; it looks like you put this code in a template file, not in the WordPress page content. Is that right? On my system this shortcode works fine in the page content:

[mla_gallery rtmedia=gallery post_parent=all posts_per_page=100 s="{+template:({+request:search-string+}|a-bad-term)+}" buddypress_urls=link mla_nolink_text="Enter search terms above and hit Search!"]

I removed the mla_caption, mla_output and mla_link_href parameters because they are ignored when the gallery display is handled by [rtmedia_gallery].

You wrote “I would like that when we write a city name in the MLA search box, it could display the images containing that city.” That is a surprisingly complicated requirement!

The current “keyword search” feature of [mla_gallery] allows you to search several text fields in the wp_posts database table. MLA optionally extends this search to taxonomy terms if you add “terms” to the mla_search_fields parameter. All of this requires some custom SQL coding that modifies the WordPress WP_Query logic.

Keyword search also accepts multiple words/phrases and lets you specify what happens when more than one word/phrase is entered. For example, if you enter “paris cat” the default requires that both of these words must be present. If you code mla_search_connector=OR you get all items where “paris” is present added to all items where “cat” is present.

Finally, case-insensitive and partial word matches are allowed. If you enter “par” you will match items containing “Paris”, “paris” and “party”.

WordPress allows you to search on custom field content but does not support multiple values in one search.

Finally, if you enter a mix of city names and search words in a single field there is no way to separate out which is which. I suggest you add a separate City field to you search form for this search.

I did some experimenting and came up with a combination that mostly works. You can enter this text in a test page of your own and play with it:

<form id="photo-search-form" action="." method="post">
Keywords: <input size=50 id="mla-search-box" name="search-string" type="text" value="" placeholder="Enter your search words here...." autofocus/><br>
City: <input size=50 id="mla-search-city" name="city-string" type="text" value="" placeholder="Enter your city here...."/><br>
<input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="Search" />
</form>

<hr>
[mla_gallery rtmedia=gallery post_parent=all posts_per_page=100 s="{+template:({+request:search-string+})+}" meta_key=City meta_value="{+template:({+request:city-string+})+}" meta_compare=LIKE buddypress_urls=link mla_nolink_text="Enter search terms above and hit Search!"]
<hr>

There are two shortcomings with the above solution:

1. Even if you do not enter a city value, only items with SOME value in the “City” custom field are selected.
2. All of items with some value in the “City” custom field are selected/displayed when both of the text boxes are empty.

Both of these could be fixed with a bit of PHP code that handles the shortcode parameters in a different way. If the separate search fields solution would work for you I can work out the PHP code required to clean it up. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for clarifying your “city” field and where it’s stored. Please accept my apologies for not reading the “Add custom field in activity page and display the value submitted in the custom field in lightbox” topic you posted a link to more carefully.

You are right; the “city” field you implemented is stored and managed by rtMedia, not WordPress. My earlier post applies to WordPress custom fields, or “post metadata”. The solution I outlined in the earlier post will not help you.

Since your city field is managed by rtMedia using their own SQL queries, any solution for adding it to the search form would also involve custom queries using PHP code and raw SQL. It might be feasible to implement a stand-alone “city” search, but I do not see any straightforward way to combine the city search with the MLA/WordPress keyword search. I regret the news is not better, but if a stand-alone search would help I can give you more specific guidance on that.

I have created a new example plugin that implements a solution for your “one search bar” application. It is part of the latest MLA Development Version dated 120161127. To get the Development Version, follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Shortcode not working in (special) widget

Once the Development Version is installed, navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the �Example Plugins� button. Type �multi� in the text box and click �Search Plugins� to filter the table.

You are looking for �MLA Multi-search Example� plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the �Install� rollover action, then go to the WordPress Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate the new plugin as you would any other WordPress plugin.

Finally, go back to your search page and add the multi_search parameter to your [mla_gallery] shortcode. For example:

<form id="photo-search-form" action="." method="post">
Keywords: <input size=50 id="mla-search-box" name="search-string" type="text" value="" placeholder="Enter your search words here...." autofocus/><br>
<input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="Search" />
</form>

<hr>
[mla_gallery rtmedia=gallery posts_per_page=100 s="{+template:({+request:search-string+}|a-bad-search-value)+}" multi_search="keyword:,custom:City,custom:Country" buddypress_urls=link mla_nolink_text="Enter search terms above and hit Search!"]
<hr>

You will need to change custom:City,custom:Country to the names of your two custom fields.

It would be great if you can install the Development Version and new example plugin and let me know if they work for you. In particular, experiment with multi-word city/country names.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by David Lingren.