Super search with Playa and Matrix

Question

I'm currently building a product website with a Super Search search, which needs to find keywords in Matrix data through a Playa field. My structure is looking like this:

Channel Product - Custom field: Articles (Playa field type, links one or multiple entries to Product list channel). Field is set to searchable.

Channel Product list - Custom field: Product_table (Matrix field type). Field and columns 'article code' and 'article description' set to searchable.

Channel Product, field 'articles' [Playa fieldtype] => Channel Product list, field 'product_table' [Matrix fieldtype]

What I have is a single (keyword) input field in my search form, which redirects to the results page. I want the search function to find entries in the channel 'Product' through the Playa field (so linked Product list entries are not shown separately).

I first set up the channel fields and search preferences, and after that I published and linked the entries.

This is my code:

{exp:super_search:results channel="products" highlight_keywords="em" limit="50" status="open"}
<!-- HTML Markup -->
{/exp:super_search:results}

I am however not getting it to work. It looks like the Matrix data is not searched for the keyword. When I pass the column via GET parameters (/search?product_list_table:article_code=XXXX), I do get the result I want. However, my search function should only consist out of 1 field (the keyword field) and should search in other custom fields as well.

Is this even possible?

Answer 1

The issue is that Playa only stores the Title of the selected entry in its exp_channel_data field, and since you're searching the products channel, Super Search will only look for matching keyword data in that channel's exp_channel_data fields. It won't "follow" Playa fields to also look at all the field content for child entries.

Unfortunately your particular setup is not well-suited to search in this way.