Group search results by starting letter, number

Anonymous

#40108

I want to create a search results layout where they are grouped by starting letter, like in this example:
example

Is there a way to accomplish this? I’ve found some solutions that perform this function outside of the loop (solution example), but when I use that, s&f does not produce any results.

Do you have any idea how I might set this up?

Ross Moderator

#40361

Hi Boris

I’m afraid this is not possible…

I had another user try to implement this, and their workaround was to create a custom taxonomy and manually assign their posts to taxonomy terms like A, B, C etc.

There could be a way to automate this, which is to automatically add your posts (when they are saved/published) to the correct taxonomy terms – but this would be some custom code.

I can point you in the right direction – this seems like a good starting point:

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/126409/automatically-assign-taxonomy-term-if-custom-meta-value-exists

I guess you would check the starting letter of the post title, and assign taxonomy based on that.

I hope that helps.

Thanks

Anonymous

#40929

Hi Ross,

I’ve experimented quite a lot, but can’t get it the way I want. A major problem is the fact the your results.php renders separate divs for each result, instead of for instance a ul with list items. How can I change it so that a ul with list items for each post is generated?

Thank you!
Boris

Trevor

#40940

From the documentation (I think this is what you want):

Customising the Results

If you wish to customise the display of your results, you must override the default template that is being used by Search & Filter:

Create a folder in your theme folder called search-filter.
Copy the file wp-content\plugins\search-filter\templates\results.php from the templates folder in to the newly created folder in your theme – wp-content\themes\your-theme-name\search-filter\results.php

From now on, Search & Filter will load this version of the template instead of its own – so you can make any customisations that are necessary.

Anonymous

#40941

Hello Trevor,
I can find that in the documentation. My problem is that I don’t know how to output a ul with each result as a list item using your custom query. I tried, but the result I get is that each search result is a ul with one li item in it, instead of a single ul with each result as a li item. Ross let me know he could help me get that running. Perhaps you can ask him?

Cheers!
Boris

Trevor

#40958

Ah. If you edit the results.php file that you copied to your (child) theme folder, you will find this code in the middle of it (I have edited it a bit to compress it, but it looks somewhat like this):

<?php
while ($query->have_posts())
  {
    $query->the_post();
?>
<?php /* echo get_post_mime_type(get_the_ID()); */ ?>
<div>
  <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
  <p><br /><?php the_excerpt(); ?><p>
<?php 
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
  echo '<p>';
  the_post_thumbnail("small");
  echo '</p>';
}
?>
  <p><?php the_category(); ?><p>
  <p><?php the_tags(); ?><p>
  <p><small><?php the_date(); ?></small><p>
</div>
<hr />
<?php
}
?>

Try replacing that with this:

<ul class="custom-sf-results-list">
<?php
while ($query->have_posts())
  {
    $query->the_post();
?>
<?php /* echo get_post_mime_type(get_the_ID()); */ ?>
<li><div>
  <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
  <p><br /><?php the_excerpt(); ?><p>
<?php 
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
  echo '<p>';
  the_post_thumbnail("small");
  echo '</p>';
}
?>
  <p><?php the_category(); ?><p>
  <p><?php the_tags(); ?><p>
  <p><small><?php the_date(); ?></small><p>
</div></li>
<hr />
<?php
}
?>
</ul>

Not sure if that will work.

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