Question

I have a query that returns all of my custom post types, ordered by the correct field. What I’m now trying to do is add a filter to it; the only new item I’m introducing is the meta_compare and meta_value_num fields.

Here’s what my query looks like:

array(9) {
    ["post_type"]=> string(16) "my_custom_post_type"
    ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish"
    ["posts_per_page"]=> int(9)
    ["paged"]=> int(2)
    ["meta_key"]=> string(3) "age"
    ["meta_value_num"]=> array(2) {
        [0]=> int(3)
        [1]=> int(4)
    }
    ["meta_compare"]=> string(1) "="
    ["orderby"]=> string(14) "meta_value_num"
    ["order"]=> string(3) "ASC"
}

Even if I make the meta_value_num a single int, instead of being an array, it still always returns all items, not just the ones for the specified age.

UPDATE

I’ve also tried this array, based on a recommendation below, but no luck with it either. It still returns all posts of the custom post type.

array(5) {
    ["post_type"]=>string(16) "my_custom_post_type"
    ["post_status"]=>string(7) "publish"
    ["posts_per_page"]=>int(9)
    ["paged"]=>int(0)
    ["meta_query"]=>array(4) {
        ["key"]=>string(3) "age"
        ["value"]=>array(3) {
            [0]=>int(2)
            [1]=>int(3)
            [2]=>int(4)
        }
        ["compare"]=>string(2) "IN"
        ["type"]=>string(7) "NUMERIC"
    }
}

Answer 1

‘meta_query’ must be an array. That array contains an array with key, value and compare (and optionally type). This allows meta_query to have multiple queries in it (like age=5, color=red).

So the reason this was not working is that meta_query has to have two arrays.

array(8) {
    ["post_type"]=>string(16) "myartlab_gallery"
    ["post_status"]=>string(7) "publish"
    ["posts_per_page"]=>int(9)
    ["paged"]=>int(2)
    ["meta_key"]=>string(3) "age"
    ["orderby"]=>string(14) "meta_value_num"
    ["order"]=>string(3) "ASC"
    ["meta_query"]=>array(1) {
        [0]=>array(4) {
            ["key"]=>string(3) "age"
            ["value"]=>array(3) {
                [0]=>int(4)
                [1]=>int(5)
                [2]=>int(6)
            }
            ["compare"]=>string(2) "IN"
            ["type"]=>string(7) "NUMERIC"
        }
    }
}