Implementing a search function to retrieve custom table data

While content created using custom post types can be automatically searched by the built-in WordPress search engine, custom database tables don't benefit from the same treatment. Instead, plugin developers choosing this mechanism to store information must build their own search functionality.

This recipe shows how to add a search box to the bug listing created in the previous section and how to use the resulting query data to narrow down the list of bugs that are displayed by the shortcode.

Getting ready

You should have already followed the recipe titled Displaying custom database table data in shortcodes to have an existing framework to augment. Alternatively...