John Davidson

Message:

I am performing a WP_Query on a custom post type called "task" that has a field "stage". I need to get all of the posts with a "stage" >= the "stage" of another task. Problem is stage is a string value, so using >= operator in the meta query won't work.

Currently my hack is to create an array that contains string value of numbers $stage to 50, and query for posts who's stage is in that array. This will work for the time being as no stage is above 12, but not a very scalable or dynamic solution. I'm wondering if there is a better way to mutate a value recieved in WP_query before the operator is used on it?

    $stage = get_field('stage', $task_id);



    $future_tasks = array();

    for ($i = intval($stage); $i <= intval($stage) + 50; $i++) {

        array_push($future_tasks, strval($i));

    }



    $tasks_query_args = array(

        'post_type' => array('task'),

        'posts_per_page' => -1,

        'order' => 'DESC',

        'meta_query' => array(

            '0' => array(

                'key' => 'project',

                'value' => $project_id,

                'compare' => '=',

            ),

            '1' => array(

                'key' => 'stage',

                'value' => $future_tasks,

                'compare' => 'IN',

            ),

            'relation' => 'AND',

        ),

    );

Ideally the second parameter of the query would be something like:

      '1' => array(

            'key' => 'stage',

            'value' => intval($stage),

            'compare' => '>=',

        ),

But that won't work because value of the stage field is a string.

Wondering if there are any ideas about how to better achieve this?

---

My Answer:
One way to achieve this is to use the `CAST` function in the `meta_query` to convert the string value of the `stage` field to a number before comparing it. Here's an example of how you can modify your `meta_query` to achieve this:

php
$tasks_query_args = array(
'post_type' => array('task'),
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'order' => 'DESC',
'meta_query' => array(
'0' => array(
'key' => 'project',
'value' => $project_id,
'compare' => '=',
),
'1' => array(
'key' => 'stage',
'value' => $stage,
'compare' => '>=',
'type' => 'NUMERIC',
),
'relation' => 'AND',
),
);


By adding the `'type' => 'NUMERIC'` parameter to the `meta_query`, you are telling WordPress to treat the value of the `stage` field as a number when comparing it. This way, you can compare the string values as numbers and get the desired results.

This should allow you to compare the `stage` field as numbers in your `WP_Query` without having to manually create an array of future stages.