How to combine two get_users() array?

The $q1 and $q2 are working well individually.

if (!empty($search_term)) {

        $q1 = get_users(array(
            'fields' => 'all',
            'role' => 'contact',
            'search' => '*'.esc_attr( $search_term ).'*',
        ));

        $q2 = get_users(array(
            'fields' => 'all',
            'role' => 'contact',
            'meta_query' => array(
                'relation' => 'OR',
                array(
                    'key'     => 'first_name',
                    'value'   => $search_term,
                    'compare' => 'LIKE'
                ),
                array(
                    'key'     => 'last_name',
                    'value'   => $search_term,
                    'compare' => 'LIKE'
                ),
                array(
                    'key' => 'location',
                    'value' => $search_term ,
                    'compare' => 'LIKE'
                )
            )
        ));

        $all_contacts = array_merge( $q1, $q2 );
        //$all_contacts = $q1;

    }

    $contacts_array = array();

    if (count($all_contacts) > 0 ){
        
        foreach ($all_contacts as $index => $contact) {
            $contacts_array[] = array(
                "id" => $contact->ID,
                "name" => $contact->display_name,
                "email" => $contact->user_email,
                "phone" => $contact->phone_number,
                "country" => $contact->location,
                "website" => $contact->user_url,
            );
        }
    }

    return $contacts_array;

How can I merge them together for results?

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Edit: to clarify, the answer to

How can I merge them together for results?

Is that you really can’t, not without a lot of custom SQL and using filters. The complexity of going that route far outweighs any perceived benefits and wouldn’t be very future-proof. I’d recommend using the solution below and putting it all into a method that you can call to get what you need.

Original Answer

I tested this locally and was able to get two sets of results – from there, I passed them through a callback in array_filter to remove the duplicate entries:

$q1 = get_users(array(
    'fields' => 'all',
    'role'   => 'contact',
    'search' => '*'.esc_attr( $search_term ).'*',
));

$q2 = get_users(array(
    'fields' => 'all',
    'role'   => 'contact',
    'meta_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'OR',
        array(
            'key'     => 'first_name',
            'value'   => $search_term,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ),
        array(
            'key'     => 'last_name',
            'value'   => $search_term,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        ),
        array(
            'key' => 'location',
            'value' => $search_term ,
            'compare' => 'LIKE'
        )
    )
));

$results = array_merge( $q1, $q2 );
$results = array_filter( $results, function( $user ) {
    static $found_users = [];

    if ( in_array( $user->ID, $found_users, true ) ) {
        return false;
    }

    $found_users[] = $user->ID;
    return true;
} );

The static array is persisted over each call to the closure, allowing the code to keep track of which users have already been processed. If a user’s ID is in the $found_users array, we return false which removes the current element from the array.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0