Wordpress: Custom Post Type query not finding advanced custom field meta_query

Question

I have a custom post type in Wordpress called People (each post in people is a person with some bio details etc).

Inside each People post I've created a custom field called 'tags' which has a series of checkboxes.

If someone clicks on the System Manager checkbox I want to be able to only pull through all the system managers on a particular page.

The most success I've had is using the wp_get_recent_posts instead of new wp_query .. this will output everybody UNTIL I add my extra meta query search. Then nothing appears.

$people_args = array(
    'post_type' => 'people',
    'post_status'=>'publish',
    'meta_query' => array(
    array(
        'key' => 'tags', // name of custom field
        'value' => 'systemmanager',
        'compare' => 'LIKE'
    )
    )
);
$people_posts = wp_get_recent_posts($people_args);
foreach( $people_posts as $people ){    

    $fields = get_fields($people["ID"]);

    if (get_post_thumbnail_id( $people["ID"] )>0) {
        $myimgsp = wp_get_attachment_image_src(get_post_thumbnail_id($people["ID"]),'full');
        echo '
            <li class="item">
                <a href="'.get_permalink(43).'"><img src="'.$myimgsp[0].'" alt="'.$people["post_title"].'" class="img-responsive" /></a>
                <div class="profile">
                    <h3>'.$people["post_title"].'</h3>
                    <p>'.$fields["job_title"].'</p>
                    <a href="'.get_permalink(43).'"  class="btn invert black">View Profile</a>
                </div>

            </li>';
    }
}
wp_reset_query();

I've been stuck on this for hours trying out all the different types of loops but I've had no luck. Has anyone come across this problem before?

Answer 1

If you got stuck on the query maybe try different approach and use the post_id from the query and make small loop inside your code there use get_post_meta(post_id) to check the meta key and get the tags value... something like this...

$meta = get_post_meta($post_ID);
foreach($meta as $key=>$val)
    {
        if ($key == 'tags')
        echo $val;
    }

Answer 2

So I'm feeling a little silly! In my functions.php I had forgotten to set that the custom post type should support custom fields. So even though my Advanced Custom Fields were showing .. it wasn't getting pulled through when I was calling it.

To rectify I added to my custom post type config:

'supports' => array('title','thumbnail','custom-fields')