[FIXED] Changing the relation in product (or page/post) searches from AND to OR

Issue

Without using a plugin, I need to change the standard product searches from Woocommerce to be OR and not AND. So when using the search template for products, it must return any products that contain any one of the words typed in. Currently it uses AND, so will not return a products unless it contains all the works in the search string.

add_action('woocommerce_product_query',array($this,'do_stuff')); does not seem to get called at all, but add_action('pre_get_posts',array($this,'do_stuff')); does get called, so I am presuming that's where it will need to be.

My challenge is finding out how to change the 'relation' field on the search terms? Dumping the $query (in pre_get_posts) is not very helpful.

It seems to me this should be a simple task, so I am presuming I am missing something obvious, or not looking for the right thing on google. PS This is for the search functionality on the front end.

Any ideas?

Solution

Hmm, this works, but really seems like a major 'hack' to me =>

<?php
class schsSearch
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        add_filter('posts_search',array($this,'customsearch'), 500, 2);
    }
    function customsearch( $search, $wp_query)
    {
        if (!is_admin()&& isset($_GET['s'])&&strlen($search)>0)
        {
            $a=explode('AND',$search);
            $search="AND".$a[1];
            for ($i=2;$i<count($a);$i++)
            {
                $search.="OR".$a[$i];
            }
        }
        return $search;
    }
}
new schsSearch();
?>

Basically I am just using str_replace to change all instances of "AND' top 'OR' after the first AND in the search string. The FOR loop accommodates the number of words in the search string.

Looking at the source code of wp-includes/class-wp-query.php I do not suspect there would be another way, as the AND seems to be rather hard coded.

Answered By - Gavin Simpson