Exclude password protected posts from search

[cristianuibar]

Description of the Change

The problem we faced was the display of password-protected posts in the search results. Upon further investigation we were not able to hide password-protected posts via any existing hooks. Looking at past issues, we found this one: #1083 which had a PR: #1094 that was reverted at a later time. Upon testing the PR we managed to successfully hide posts from search results using it hence I am re-opening the PR with an additional hook to be able to show posts regardless of admin status if one might want that.

Alternate Designs

We attempted to hide password-protected posts from the search results (which is default WP behavior) via existing hooks with no success.

Benefits

Hide password-protected posts from search results. This behavior can be disabled via the included hook.

Possible Drawbacks

None of which I can tell so far.

Verification Process

Upon implementing this code on our test and production sites, we re-run the indexing process and then tested the default WP search results in the front-end of the site using different keywords that we knew previously returned password-protected posts.

Checklist:

• I have read the CONTRIBUTING document.
• My code follows the code style of this project.
• My change requires a change to the documentation.
• I have updated the documentation accordingly.
• I have added tests to cover my change.
• All new and existing tests passed.

Applicable Issues

None so far.

Changelog Entry

Add support for hiding password-protected posts from search-results. Props @allan23 (#1094)
Add filter hook so you can still display password-protected posts from search-results. @cristianuibar

[tlovett1]

Hmm, interesting.

Excluding password protected posts absolutely makes sense. I think there is a better way to do it than tricking the plugin into using meta.

I also wonder if ElasticPress should just not index password protected posts which people should not be using anyway.

[dinhtungdu]

WP_Query has an argument named has_password. IMO, we can add support for that arg to Post Indexable, then we can filter the search query to exclude password-protected posts.

[tlovett1]

@dinhtungdu can you create a PR for that?

[sagarsdeshmukh]

Hi @tlovett1 , Are you planning to merge one PR from #1789 or #1913 which allow to skip password protected content from search?

[mckdemps]

Being addressed through #1913