Low Search - have channel as search criteria

Question

I've been wrestling with this for too long and it's doing my head in now!

I am using the low search plugin for expressionengine and want to search: a) by keyword (which is working fine) b) by channel - selected by dropdown (which I can't get to work)

So the results would show channel entries with the relevant keywords ONLY in the selected channel.

Currently I have:

{exp:low_search:form 
        form_class="header-search"
        form_id="search-keywords"
        required="keywords"
        result_page="search/results"
}
            <select name="searchChannel">
                <option value="channel1|channel2">All</option>
                <option value="channel1">Channel1</option>
                <option value="channel2">Channel2</option>
            </select>
            <input type="text" name="keywords"id="keywords">
            <input type="submit">
{/exp:low_search:form} 

results page:

{exp:low_search:results 
   disable="{gv:disable_default}" 
   limit="18"
   orderby_sort="title|asc"
   query="{segment_3}"  
}

I can pass through the searchChannel field through to the results page by adding:

{low_search_searchChannel}

to the results page; and of course I can set the channel filter in the results page by hard coding it:

channel="channel1"

but if I try:

channel="{low_search_searchChannel}"

I get nothing. There's probably a better way anyway to pass it straight in via the form tag, but have tried everything I can think of!

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

There is no need to approach it like that. Low Search handles both native and custom parameters the same: like this. So any parameter can be an input field.

That means that if you name your select element channel, you're already done, eg:

<select name="channel">
  <option value="channel1|channel2">All</option>
  <option value="channel1">Channel1</option>
  <option value="channel2">Channel2</option>
</select>

No need to set the channel="" param on the Results tag, let alone for PHP in your template.

Better still, since you're using the Keywords filter, you might want to consider targeting the collection param rather than channel, eg:

<select name="collection">
  <option value="">All</option>
  {collections}
    <option value="{collection_name}">{collection_label}</option>
  {/collections}
</select>

Answer 2

Ahhh, good old parse order :)

{low_search_searchChannel} can't be parsed until it is inside of the {exp:low_search:results } I would suspect. How about a little PHP to get you out of stuck-ville?

PHP on Input

<?php 
    $query = ee()->uri->segment(3);
    $query = json_decode(base64_decode($query));
    //validate your channel here
    $channel = 'channel1|channel2'; //default
    if ( !empty ( $query->searchChannel ) ) { 
        $channel = $query->searchChannel;
    }
?>
{exp:low_search:results 
    disable="{gv:disable_default}" 
    limit="18"
    orderby_sort="title|asc"
    query="{segment_3}"  
    channel="<?php echo $channel ; ?>"
}

This should check if searchChannel was submitted (you can further check it where I put the comment) and fetch it into a PHP variable, completely seperate from low_search. on output if $channel is empty (perhaps someone tried to inject something and it got cleaned) it puts the default channels in, synonymous with your All option.

Give that a little try and see how you get on.

Edit

Added code to examplify how to decode the Low Search URL parameter...

PS> Making a site about biking or holidays per chance?? lol, I decoded your example from the comments, channel = tours, keywords = france.... :D