BuddyPress.org

Thank you, thank you for your clear and authoritative reply.

I adopted method (2) as it seemed easier for me and I now have the result I wanted.

Very happy!
Tony

So I am getting my extra user data fields with a line like:
echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:150px;">' , bp_get_member_profile_data('field=Ovni model'),'</div>';
But I would like them to be search links as it is in an individual profile. I have achieved this with

echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:60px;"><a href=', $bp->pages->members, '?s=', bp_get_member_profile_data('field=Ovni model'),' rel="nofollow">' , bp_get_member_profile_data('field=Ovni model'),'</a></div>';

However, I am now also using the plugin Custom Profile Filters for BuddyPress, which lets me set which profile fields should not be search links and also allows users to spilt their data up, so a profile field “[ocean] and [coast]” gets two separate search links, one for ‘ocean’ and another for ‘coast’. Neat. It seems to do this by adding a filter to bp_get_the_profile_field_value.

However, my manual addition of search links as above ignores these settings, and any [] in the fields comes through and are visible.

It occurs to me that, rather than fetching the fields with bp_get_member_profile_data(), I would do better to get the data however it is got for the individual profile display, as this method puts the search links in and obeys the options set in Custom Profile Filters for BuddyPress. I have spent much of today trying to find how to call bp_get_the_profile_field_value. If I use
echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:150px;">' , bp_get_member_profile_value('field=Ovni model'),'</div>';
I get an invalid link. I suspect it need a data type argument to get a search link. I have tried to find how it is called to display the user profile, but failed to find it. In the BP Codex I have only found how to remove the filter that puts the links in.

If someone could enlighten me it would be most helpful. Thanks.

@danbo… thank you for responding. I am struggling – I am not an expert in this and I am unsure what is called by what, and whether the filter you suggest will be invoked by what I had already. I now have your suggestion included:

function add_info_to_members_loop() {
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:60px;">', bp_get_member_profile_data('field=Ovni model'),'</div>';
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:100px;">', bp_get_member_profile_data('field=Rig'),'</div>';
}
add_action( 'bp_directory_members_item', 'add_info_to_members_loop' );

function make_directory_profile_field_searchable() {	
	if ( $value = xprofile_get_field_data('Ovni model', bp_get_member_user_id() ) ) :
	   // as of xprofile_filter_link_profile_data function
 	  $search_url = add_query_arg( array( 's' => urlencode( $value ) ), bp_get_members_directory_permalink() );
	   $clickable = '<div class="click_dir"><a href="' . esc_url( $search_url ) . '" rel="nofollow">' . $value . '</a></div>';	
	   echo $clickable;	
	   endif;
}
add_filter ( 'bp_directory_members_item', 'make_directory_profile_field_searchable' ); 	 

Your code has the field name ‘Ovni model’ built in and I don’t understand how to pass the field name through from add_info_to_members_loop.

[I still think that if I could work out what is called when a field is displayed in the user profile, that call would deliver what I need in the members loop.]

I have spent a long while trying to fathom this out, so extra help will be really appreciated.

Thank you to all who have helped and especially @danbp who took time to explain things at length.
I have finally grasped how this thing works, more or less.

I do need to apply the same quite complex filter to both the profile and directory list. I have now devised a common filter function plugin that can be invoked within the members loop as a filter and within the profile display as an action. I have to call it in different ways, depending on where it is being called from, and the trick was to call it from two separate hookable functions. The core of what I have follows:

// Remove standard filtering of profile fields
function ovni_init() {
	remove_filter( 'bp_get_the_profile_field_value', 'xprofile_filter_link_profile_data', 9, 2 );
	}
add_action( 'bp_init', 'ovni_init' );

// add our replacement filter, which is given a field value, to the members loop
function ovni_filter_field_for_directory($field_value){
	$field_name=bp_get_the_profile_field_name();
	return ovni_get_field_searchable($field_name);
	}
add_filter( 'bp_get_the_profile_field_value', 'ovni_filter_field_for_directory', 50, 1 );

// add fields to directory listing make them searchable according to rules of this plugin
function ovni_add_info_to_members_loop() {
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:60px;">', ovni_get_field_searchable('Ovni model'),'</div>';
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:100px;">', ovni_get_field_searchable('Rig'),'</div>';
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:275px;">', ovni_get_field_searchable('Home waters'),'</div>';
	echo '<div style="position: absolute; left:500px;">', ovni_get_field_searchable('Home port'),'</div>';

}
add_action( 'bp_directory_members_item', 'ovni_add_info_to_members_loop' );

// the fuction that makes fields searchable according to the rules of this plugin
function ovni_get_field_searchable($field_name) {	
	global $ovni_no_link_fields, $ovni_social_networking_fields;
	$field_value = xprofile_get_field_data($field_name, bp_get_member_user_id() );
	
	if ( $field_value) { // only if there is content in the field
		if (is_array($field_value)){
etc. etc.

I have not included the code of my filter, but it is changing the way text in profile fields are turned into links, both when displayed in the directory entry and in the members list, thus:

(1) If is an array, serialise into a comma-separated string
(as used in outputing which social web sites a mobile number can be used for)
(2) If is an image, change HTML so that clicking on image will open full size in new tab/window
(3) If any field contians text in [ ], the contents of the [ ] pairs are turned into separate directory searches.
So if the entire text is in [ ] it overrides all other rules
(4) Fields in the list of ‘do not link’ fields are left plain
(5) The user’s web site is converted to its URL
(6) Fields containing social network user names are turned into links to those networks
(7) The remaining are turned into links to search the directory for matches.

It has been a learning curve. My formative programming of this type was in the language B (the antecedent of C), which shows how far back I go!

thanks again for the help, Tony

@henrywright… not sure exactly what you are doing, but you should be able to only generate the label when there is data

if ($field_content){
      return "label: " . $field_content;
      }
else return();