CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjquerywordpresssearchwordpress-rest-api
Andreas van Wyk
Andreas van Wyk

Reputation: 33

Searching through multiple Wordpress site post

We have multiple Worpdress blog sites (20+ sites) with each of them on their own domain and have now started creating a main website were we would like to add a search function / bar, where a visitor can do a search on the main site and it will then return a result of all the post that matches their search. From there on if they click on a post that was listed it will take them to the post on the relevant blog site, so no need to have a 2nd page for the post on the main site.

My thought so far was to use the WordPress Rest API and "wp_remote_get" function to accomplish this but there is some concerns regarding the speed of the search when the number of blog sites increase and security.

Moving all the blogs to a single site or multi site setup is not a option because I would like the option the be able to move the sites to other host if needed.

So I was wondering if anyone maybe knows of a better way do approach project.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1427

Answers (2)

Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford

Reputation: 11

Firstly, I'd try to handle a query on backend. Then obtain search results for each blog and finally Echo them to the page content.

Also you need to find a php file (in your active theme) that shows search results. Usually it is something like search.php or content-search.php.

<?php
/**
 * The template for displaying search results pages
 *
...

$query=get_search_query();

$args = array( 's' => $query );

$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );

$posts = $the_query->posts;

foreach($posts as $post) {
    // Echo some info
    // echo $post->post_name . '<br>';
}

This will show results for the current blog. So, you need to switch to every blog and get its posts for the same query ($query=get_search_query()).

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_sites/

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/switch_to_blog/

$sites = get_sites();
    foreach ( $sites as $site ) {
        switch_to_blog( $site->blog_id );

                $query=get_search_query();
    
                $args = array( 's' => $query );
    
                $the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
    
                $posts = $the_query->posts;
    
                foreach($posts as $post) {
                   // Echo some info
                  // echo $post->post_name . '<br>';
                 }
        restore_current_blog();
    }

UPD: yeap, this works for wp multysite only. Here is the option for separate sites

When you search something in your site, basically, you make a GET request:

https://your-wp-site.com/?s=QUERY_STRING&submit=Search

So, you can make Ajax GET requests ?s=QUERY_STRING&submit=Search for each domain, using js. Then parse results and insert them to the content, also using js.

function loadDoc(url) {
  var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {

     //parsing this.responseText

    var main_content = document.getElementById("main"); /*supposing your main content tag has id='main'*/

    main_content.appendChild(PARSED_ELEMENT_WITH_RESULTS);

    }
  };
  xhttp.open("GET", url, true);
  xhttp.send();
}



var query = window.location.href.split('/')[3]; /*getting query string ?s=QUERY_STRING&submit=Search */

loadDoc("https://site1.com/"+query );

loadDoc("https://site2.com/"+query );

loadDoc("https://site3.com/"+query );

...

Finally, add this javascript file to the search page.

Upvotes: 1

Ariful Islam
Ariful Islam

Reputation: 903

According to your thought , I think it is better to make api for getting from other sites. But there are some back issues then.

i. if one site down then it will not response
ii. user can continuously search on your site for getting data from other sites. this will reduce your speed.
iii. combine 20+ websites is a great large problem. because you will have to touch in every remote sites for setting up api response

for solving problem you can make another site that will collect and save data on his database and give response according to request. And in your hosting make some scripts that will updates client sites for updating and syncing data from remote

Upvotes: 0

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