Identify which post taxonomies are indexed

This is the second step in the audit we discussing in the introduction: post taxonomies.

Taxonomies must be indexed to be used in queries

Our example custom post type of event has at least two terms for the event-format taxonomy: virtual, and in_person. 

We have a search that includes a taxonomy query in the arguments:

	'tax_query' => array(
		array(
			'taxonomy' => 'event-format',
			'field'    => 'slug',
			'terms'    => $format
			)
		),

It’s the $format variable (coming from the search form or a query parameter) that indicates whether the user is looking for virtual, in_person, possibly both (in an array), or a future format that hasn’t been implemented yet.

Adding post taxonomies to an allow list

So the actual taxonomy we need to index here is event-format – I’ve also included event-city here as an additional example; often multiple taxonomies will be declared in the same filter.

These taxonomies are only being indexed when the custom post type is event.

add_filter( 'vip_search_post_taxonomies_allow_list', 'mysite_events_indexable_post_tax', 10, 2 );

function mysite_events_indexable_post_tax( $allow, $post ) {
	if ( is_object( $post ) && 'event' === $post->post_type ) {
		$allow[] = 'event-format';
		$allow[] = 'event-city';
	}

	return $allow;
}

Note the convention above builds a list that looks as follows; it’s an indexed array.

[
	'event-format',
	'event-city',
]