Elasticpress: How to make Custom Post Fields "Searchable" and "Weightable"?

[alexgarciab]

Describe your question
I have installed the ElasticPress plugin in one of my Wordpress sites that makes a heavy use of WP_Query. The type of WP_Query that we make involves searching data in Custom Post Fields of Custom Post Types. On the plugin page: page=elasticpress-weighting I see that it is only possible to index and weight content based on: Title, Content, Excerpt or Author.

Is there a way to make "Custom Post Fields" searchables and weightables?

[felipeelia]

Hi @alexgarciab ,

You can use the ep_weighting_fields_for_post_type filter for this. For example, to add a meta field with my_custom_field as the key, your code would look like this:

add_filter(
    'ep_weighting_fields_for_post_type',
    function( $fields, $post_type ) {
        if ( 'post' === $post_type ) {
            if ( empty( $fields['meta'] ) ) {
                $fields['meta'] = array(
                    'label' => 'Custom Fields',
                    'children' => array(),
                );
            }

            $key = 'meta.my_custom_field.value'; // Change my_custom_field here to what you need.
            $fields['meta']['children'][ $key ] = array(
                'key' => $key,
                'label' => 'My Custom Field',
            );
        }

        return $fields;
    },
    10,
    2
);

With that in place, you'll have this new element in the Manage Search Fields & Weighting Screen, under "Posts":

You'll need then to enable it as "Searchable" and adjust the Weight.

Please let us know if it helped and/or if you have any further questions, okay?

Thanks!

[felipeelia]

I'm closing this issue, as the question was answered. Please feel free to reopen it if needed. Also, this subject was also explored in more depth in this blog post: https://www.elasticpress.io/blog/2020/06/custom-fields-and-weighted-search-with-elasticpress-part-2/ :)

Thanks!