Can you make search fields optional?

[davidyell]

Scenario
I have a blog with posts, tags and categories. A post doesn't have to be in a category. My filter form includes a like match for the title, and a dropdown of categories with 'empty' => true, using a value match on category_id.

Generated url possibilities
example.com/posts?q=welcome - Return posts containing 'welcome'
example.com/posts?q=welcome&category=8 - Return posts in category 8 with welcome in the title
example.com/posts?q=welcome&category= - Returns no results

Sidestep
So far the only way I can find to sidestep this is to use a custom find and check the $options array param for empty() and ignore it if it's empty.

Ideally
The CakeDC/search had a nice way of just marking a filter field as allowed to be optional, which would exclude it from searches if it was empty. Something like this would be ideal for scenarios where you want to filter using optionally null data.

[jippi]

seems like a easy fix - check the value for empty and allowEmpty and don't append it to the query

[davidyell]

Thanks guys! 👍