Querying sanatized data with meta_query in Wordpress - php

Question

After Googeling this for a while, I've found that this should work ref., but I don't seem to get it running.
On the backend I have a custom field on commments for setting a list of userIDs of who liked it. It is stored sanatized in the DB this way:
a:2:{i:0;s:1:"1";i:1;s:1:"2";}
which translates into
Array (
[0] => 1
[1] => 2
)
A pretty straight forward flat array where the values 1 and 2 are the user IDs of two likes. Now, I want to query comments liked by userID 1
$args = array(
'status' => 'approve',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'liked_by',
'value' => array(1),
'compare' => 'IN',
'type' => 'numeric'
)
)
);
// The Query
$comments_query = new WP_Comment_Query;
$comments = $comments_query->query( $args );
And I get no comments in return, why is that?
Here is the query generated:
SELECT * FROM wp_comments JOIN wp_posts ON wp_posts.ID = wp_comments.comment_post_ID INNER JOIN wp_commentmeta ON ( wp_comments.comment_ID = wp_commentmeta.comment_id ) WHERE ( comment_approved = '1' ) AND wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' AND (
( wp_commentmeta.meta_key = 'liked_by' AND CAST(wp_commentmeta.meta_value AS SIGNED) IN ('1') )
) GROUP BY wp_comments.comment_ID ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC

Answer 1

I wanted to do this over serialized data even though I cited an URL that said
don't store array of ids in one row instead loop through ids array and
normalize your likes data manually Don't serialize data into a
database field.
This is because I used ACF and added an Users field, which used serialized data. I solved my problem by avoiding ACF and just using the comment meta API.
// UserID 1 likes commentID 9
add_comment_meta(9, 'like', 1, false);
// Get comments liked by userID 1
$args = array(
'status' => 'approve',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'like',
'value' => 1,
'compare' => '=',
'type' => 'numeric'
)
)
);
// The Query
$comments_query = new WP_Comment_Query;
$comments = $comments_query->query( $args );
// Surprise, it's commentID 9
Notice how I use add_comment_meta with unique=false for every like instead of serializing an array into the database, making it unavailable for queries.