CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpwordpress
Charlie McCluskey
Charlie McCluskey

Reputation: 92

WP Query not returning expected value

I've got the below code to return a list of jobs that are marked as complete but don't have an invoice number inputted into the invoice_number text field yet. It returns nothing even though I've not inputted any invoice numbers yet.

$posts = get_posts(array(
    'post_type'         => 'jobs',
    'posts_per_page'        => -1,
    'meta_key'          => 'job_date',
    'orderby'           => 'meta_value',
    'order'             => 'ASC',
    'tax_query' => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'job_status',
            'field' => 'slug',
            'terms' => array( 'complete' )
        ),
    ),
    'meta_query' => array (
      'relation' => 'AND',
        array (
          'key' => 'invoice_number',
          'value' => '',
          'compare' => '='
        )
    )
));

Upvotes: 1

Views: 23

Answers (1)

Zoli Szabó
Zoli Szabó

Reputation: 4534

In the meta_query part you are explicitly looking for jobs with invoice_number equal to '' (empty string).

However, when a meta (field & value) is not assigned to a post (in your case a job), it will not exist at all, so you need to use:

    ...
    'meta_query' => array (
      'relation' => 'AND',
        array (
          'key' => 'invoice_number',
          'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
        )
    )
    ...

Reference: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_meta_query/

Also, usually singular form is used for post_type values, so make sure that your current "jobs" value is actually correct.

Upvotes: 1

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