Search Users box on ms-users.php doesn't search all fields

[novasource]

The Search Users box on ms-users.php isn't working for valid search terms.

I have a user with these fields:
Username: 12345678 (it's from our LDAP provider)
Name: Smith, John (again, convoluted, but it's from LDAP)
E-mail: john@…

What actually happens: If I search on smith or john smith, I get no results. But if I search on john, I see his account.

What should happen: All three of those search terms should have showed John Smith's account.

Related: #16014

What actually happens: If I search on smith or john smith, I get no results. But if I search on john, I see his account.

I think "john" is the user_nicename. WP_User_Query doesn't search for display_name that is why "smith" and "john smith" return zero results.

This won't scale as there is no index on the column in the database.

Therefore this isn't suitable for core - we could probably add a filter on the array of columns instead so you can add them if you want and don't care about the possibly deadly slow queries.

History: #15170

Hold on a sec. Where's the feature request for westi's comment above?

Added patch with a filter.

#22309 was marked as a duplicate.

This filter would be really nice to have. The argument westi made of not having an index on certain columns makes sense, but should also apply to user_email and user_url...both of which have since been added to the allowed list which is now:

array( 'ID', 'user_login', 'user_email', 'user_url', 'user_nicename' )

Also, it's relatively easy for a specific site to add the necessary index if it's something they need.

+1 for adding the user_search_columns filter

Refreshed

In 24056:

Add user_search_columns filter to WP_User_Query::prepare_query().

props aaroncampbell.
fixes #16366.