How To Exclude Results From Custom WordPress MySQL Query By Taxonomy Term

Question

I only want to show posts which do not have the term 'brand-slug' for the taxonomy 'product-brand'.

My current query doesn't apply the filter:

SELECT DISTINCT * FROM $wpdb->posts AS p
  LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta AS meta ON p.ID = meta.post_id
  LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships AS rel ON rel.object_id = p.ID
  LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS tax ON tax.term_taxonomy_id = rel.term_taxonomy_id
  LEFT JOIN $wpdb->terms AS term ON tax.term_id = term.term_id
WHERE 1=1
    AND p.post_type = 'product' 
    AND p.post_status = 'publish' 
    AND p.post_title LIKE '%$trimmed%' OR (meta.meta_key = 'product_model' AND meta.meta_value LIKE '%$trimmed%') 
    AND (tax.taxonomy = 'product-brand' AND term.slug NOT IN ('$protected'))

Neither taxonomy or slug conditionals seem to be working in the above query.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Notes:

It looks like you're not using $wpdb->prepare(), so you risk SQL injections.

I also think you're missing parentheses around the relevant OR parts, so you don't end up displaying drafts, for example.

Alternative:

Instead of writing an hardcoded SQL query, we should be able to use the WP_Query class, with some modifications through hooks/filters.

Here's an example (PHP 5.4+):

$args = [ 
    '_meta_or_like_title' => $trimmed,        // Our new custom argument!
    'post_type'           => 'product',
    'post_status'         => 'publish',
    'meta_query'          => [
        [
            'key'     => 'product_model',
            'value'   => $trimmed,            // Your meta value
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ]
    ],
    'tax_query'    => [
        [
            'taxonomy'  => 'product-brand',
            'field'     => 'slug',
            'terms'     => $protected,        // Your terms array
            'operator'  => 'NOT IN'
        ]
    ]
];

where the custom _meta_or_like_title argument is supported by a slightly modified plugin I wrote for another question here.

Plugin:

<?php
/**
 *  Plugin Name:   Meta OR LIKE Title query in WP_Query
 *  Description:   Activated through the '_meta_or_like_title' argument of WP_Query 
 *  Plugin URI:    http://stackoverflow.com/a/31241416/2078474
 *  Plugin Author: Birgir Erlendsson (birgire)
 *  Version:       0.0.1
 */

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', function( $q )
{
    if( $title = $q->get( '_meta_or_like_title' ) )
    {
        add_filter( 'get_meta_sql', function( $sql ) use ( $title )
        {
            global $wpdb;

            // Only run once:
            static $nr = 0; 
            if( 0 != $nr++ ) return $sql;

            // Modify WHERE part:
            $sql['where'] = sprintf(
                " AND ( %s OR %s ) ",
                $wpdb->prepare( 
                    "{$wpdb->posts}.post_title LIKE '%%%s%%'", 
                     $wpdb->esc_like( $title ) 
                ),
                mb_substr( $sql['where'], 5, mb_strlen( $sql['where'] ) )
            );
            return $sql;
        });
    }
}, PHP_INT_MAX );