PHP Wildcard to display all values of variable - php

Question

We have set up custom post types for real estate properties and a search form to search through these custom post types using price, city, newest, etc. We are using query variable strings/if statements to display the results, but we are having trouble with the sort options. We have three sort options in place : Newest, Price Low-High, and Price High-Low.
When the default results are displayed, the sort does not work correctly, but when a city is set in the search dropdown, the sort works perfectly.
For the city search, we have this code in place:
if (isset($_POST['city'])) {
$qs_city = get_query_var('city');
}
else {
$qs_city = " ";
I believe that this is due to the else portion of the code above. We need some sort of wildcard that allows all cities listed to be listed if a city is not set. We have tried several different things, but nothing seems to work. I'm fairly new to this, so I can better clarify any of the above, if necessary.
This is the code used to sort:
if (isset($_POST['sort'])) {
$qs_sort = get_query_var('sort');
switch ($qs_sort) {
case 'newest':
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'residential',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'paged' => $paged,
'orderby' => 'L_StatusDate',
'order' => 'DESC',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'L_City',
'value' => $qs_city,
'compare' => 'LIKE'
),
array(
'key' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'value' => array( $qs_price_min, $qs_price_max ),
'type' => 'numeric',
'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_2',
'value' => $qs_beds,
'compare' => '>='
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_3',
'value' => $qs_baths,
'compare' => '>='
)
)
);
break;
case 'price-low':
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'residential',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'paged' => $paged,
'orderby' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'order' => 'ASC',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'L_City',
'value' => $qs_city,
'compare' => 'LIKE'
),
array(
'key' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'value' => array( $qs_price_min, $qs_price_max ),
'type' => 'numeric',
'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_2',
'value' => $qs_beds,
'compare' => '>='
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_3',
'value' => $qs_baths,
'compare' => '>='
)
)
);
break;
case 'price-high':
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'residential',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'paged' => $paged,
'orderby' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'order' => 'DESC',
'meta_query' => array(
//'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'key' => 'L_City',
'value' => $qs_city,
'compare' => 'LIKE'
),
array(
'key' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'value' => array( $qs_price_min, $qs_price_max ),
'type' => 'numeric',
'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_2',
'value' => $qs_beds,
'compare' => '>='
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_3',
'value' => $qs_baths,
'compare' => '>='
)
)
);
break;
}
}
else {
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'residential',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'paged' => $paged,
'meta_query' => array(
//'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'key' => 'L_StatusDate',
'orderby' => 'DESC'
//set default to sort by newest
),
array(
'key' => 'L_City',
'value' => $qs_city,
'compare' => 'LIKE'
),
array(
'key' => 'L_SystemPrice',
'value' => array( $qs_price_min, $qs_price_max ),
'type' => 'numeric',
'compare' => 'BETWEEN'
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_2',
'value' => $qs_beds,
'compare' => '>='
),
array(
'key' => 'LM_Int1_3',
'value' => $qs_baths,
'compare' => '>='
)
)
);
}
?>

Answer 1

The main question for your situation is "what kind of application will sort the results?". It looks like you use some kind on database. But which one? If it's SQL-like database, - just replace $qs_city = " " with $qs_city = "%";