Views exposed filter, filter on multiple fields with dropdown and one textbox

Question

I'm working on a views integration where the table and its fields are exposed to views. I want to give users the ability to filter on results of this view based on 1 of 3 fields.

I want each of the three fields in a drop down, and one text field where the user can input search terms.

Then once submitted, views will filter on the specific field and terms entered.

Is this possible? I found this discussion which has no resolution: https://drupal.org/node/732458

I'm thinking I may need to just create exposed filters for each of the three fields, and then alter the form a bit to get it how I need it.

To clarify further:

I want to expose three filters, each one searches a field by the text a user entered. I can do this in Views no problem, and it produces three distinct text fields for each of the three filters. Instead, I want the user to have just one text field, and a drop down to select which one they want to search on.

Answer 1

You have a couple of options to do this:

1. As you suggested just provide the user with drop-down field with the list of the criteria and single text field, then implement hook_views_query_alter where you change the where clause based on the dropdown field value. More can be found here

2. Your second option is to use a 'Combine fields filter` with all the fields you want to search with and let the user know how your search works using a help text.

Answer 2

If I understand correctly: you want to expose 3 dropdown filters, but allow only 1 of them for input.

You can hide or show filters by using views dependent filters: https://drupal.org/project/views_dependent_filters, but then you need a filter that sets up 3 values for showing 1 of your 3 independent filters.

But, why don't you use OR instead of AND with those filters? It would give results and you can sort it as you want.