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Schema tutorialLesson 1: Searching WordPress data

Lesson 1: Searching WordPress data

Searching for data within WordPress is limited in several cases, and Gato GraphQL can help augment these capabilities.

Such an example involves custom fields (i.e. meta values): We may use custom fields to add extra information to posts (and also to users, comments, and taxonomies), however when searching for posts with some keyword, WordPress does not search within meta values.

We can then use Gato GraphQL to search for posts (and also users, comments, and taxonomies) by meta key and value.

Examples

  • Create the queries below as Persisted Queries, as to keep them stored in the website, and execute them time and again
  • Publish them as private, so that they are available only within the wp-admin, and only to the admin
  • Use an API hierarchy to manage them (eg: have a Persisted Query internal be the ancestor to all the internal queries: internal/search-posts-without-thumbnail, internal/search-users-by-locale, etc)

This query retrieves all posts that have a thumbnail, and those that do not:

query {
  postsWithThumbnail: posts(
    filter: {
      metaQuery: {
        key: "_thumbnail_id",
        compareBy: {
          key: {
            operator: EXISTS
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ) {
    id
    title
    featuredImage {
      id
      src
    }
  }
 
  postsWithoutThumbnail: posts(
    filter: {
      metaQuery: {
        key: "_thumbnail_id",
        compareBy: {
          key: {
            operator: NOT_EXISTS
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ) {
    id
    title
  }
}

This query retrieves all users who use the locale "Spanish from Argentina":

query {
  argentineSpanishLocaleUsers: users(
    filter: {
      metaQuery: {
        key: "locale",
        compareBy: {
          stringValue: {
            value: "es_AR"
            operator: EQUALS
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ) {
    id
    name
    locale: metaValue(key: "locale")
  }
}

We can use the AND and OR relations to filter data more precisely. This query retrieves posts that both have a thumbnail, and also have a custom meta todo_action with value "replace" (meaning that it needs to have the thumbnail replaced):

query {
  posts(
    filter: {
      metaQuery: [
        {
          relation: AND
          key: "_thumbnail_id",
          compareBy: {
            key: {
              operator: EXISTS
            }
          }
        },
        {
          key: "todo_action",
          compareBy: {
            stringValue: {
              value: "replace"
              operator: EQUALS
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ) {
    id
    title
  }
}

Filtering by meta can also be combined with any of the standard data items. This query retrieves all posts without thumbnail that were created after a certain date and have been tagged "wordpress":

query {
  posts(
    filter: {
      metaQuery: {
        key: "_thumbnail_id",
        compareBy: {
          key: {
            operator: NOT_EXISTS
          }
        }
      },
      dateQuery: {
        after: "2020-07-01"
      },
      tagSlugs: [
        "wordpress"
      ]
    }
  ) {
    id
    title
    tagNames
  }
}

We can also search meta using regex expressions. This query searches for all users with a Spanish locale (for instance, es_AR for Argentina, es_ES for Spain, and so on):

query {
  spanishLocaleUsers: users(filter: { metaQuery: {
    key: "locale",
    compareBy: {
      stringValue: {
        value: "es_[A-Z]+"
        operator: REGEXP
      }
    }
  }}) {
    id
    name
    locale: metaValue(key: "locale")
  }
}
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