search over multiple fields

Hello,

I am looking to realize a search over multiple CB fields containing text. Let's say user profiles have three fields cb_field1, cb_field2 and cb_field3 containing text. I'd like to do so that only one field is shown in the search but that it would search the contents of all three.

My idea was to make a 4th field cb_keyword of type text field, concatenate the other three via substitution in its description as [cb_field1] [cb_field2] [cb_field3] and set cb_keyword as shown in search. While the cb_keyword does show in search, the query itself returns zero results always. I assume this is because substitution does not work when the field's type is 'text field'?

I then tried to make cb_keyword of type 'custom HTML'. In that case, the substitution works fine which I can see by showing the cb_keyword field on the profile (for testing). However, in the search, I only get the fields title displayed, but not a box where I could enter text to search. So that did not work either.

Is there a variation to any of the above I could try to make it work?

Or perhaps another approach altogether? for example using CB Query Field? Would a field of that type be searchable by any chance?

Thank you for your advise.

The only way to do that is to use CB Search Bot and Joomlas search module. We currently don't have a way to search multiple fields from a userlist using a single input. We probably won't have such a feature until we get fieldtypes refactored as their code has yet to be fully upgraded. Once we refactor it their search query usage should be more usable and doing something like this should be more functional. CB Search Bot uses some workarounds to get around such missing feature, but it's not as good as it should be.