---
title: "Exact-match search for Gravity Forms Multiselect and List fields"
date: 2018-03-12
author: "GravityKit"
link: "https://staging.gravitykit.com/exact-match-search-gravity-forms-multiselect-list-fields/"
---

# Exact-match search for Gravity Forms Multiselect and List fields

A GravityView customer had a form on his site containing a Multiselect field of all the US states. The problem was that their search results for the state "Kansas" were also matching the state "Ar**kansas**". This wasn't good. If the field were an Address field, it would have been easy, but the field was a Multiselect. So why was this a problem?  Gravity Forms Search API allows you to define a search "operator" for search fields. A few search operators include:

- `contains` - The default operator: does the field value contain any of the search value
- `is` - The search exactly matches the value
- `in` - Is the search value one of an array of items
- `not in` - Exclude the value from search results

#### Gravity Forms restricts List and Multiselect fields to the `contains` operator

Multiselect fields store their data in a different way than most fields: they convert the choices into a single text string (formatted as [JSON](http://json-schema.org)), so multiple values would be stored like this: `["Colorado","Arkansas","Texas"]` List fields with columns also store their data this way. List fields without columns "serialize" the data, which stores the values in a different, but similar, format: `a:3:{i:0;s:8:"Colorado";i:1;s:8:"Arkansas";i:2;s:5:"Texas";}` Gravity Forms doesn't allow using the "in" or "not in" search operators for these two field types. This has made exact-match searches impossible, but I realized: **we just need to add quotes to either side of the search, and `contains` will work!**. I added the code below to our customer's site, and voilá: searches now distinguish Ar**kansas** from Kansas. ---

## For developers working with GravityView

**The plugin file **must be modified** before adding it to your site! You need to define your own form ID and form field IDs.** [Download the mini-plugin for GravityView](https://github.com/gravityview/gv-snippets/archive/addon/13644-exact-match-field.zip) - Define the form & field IDs that should be exact-matched, and the plugin will add quotes around the fields you want to exact-match. 

## For developers working with Gravity Forms API

If you're working with Gravity Forms API directly using the [`GFAPI::get_entries()`](https://docs.gravityforms.com/api-functions/#get-entries) method, you'll need to change your search criteria array to add the quotes: **Before:**```
$search_criteria['field_filters'][] = array(
  'key' => '1', 
  'operator' => 'contains', 
  'value' => 'Kansas'
);

```

**After:**```
$search_criteria['field_filters'][] = array(
  'key' => '1', 
  'operator' => 'contains', 
  'value' => '"Kansas"'
);

```

I hope this helps!