How do you properly configure SXA Page List with custom query?

Question

Testing with SXA 1.2 on Sitecore 8.2 u1/u2.

I'm trying to query a list of pages marked as featured.

Here is what I have setup:

• Custom Page template inherits from Page.
• Checkbox field is added with IsFeatured field.

• Query defined to return featured pages.

+location:{29E0ED6F-452B-45A0-B799-C51EBD14970A};template:{13de59b4-ad71-4542-9ce0-a0483422e768};custom:isfeatured|true

• The query item does not have a way to build the query, so I used the datasource

Unfortunately, when I test the page no results are returned.

Update

Test with a new query that has a + for each setting but does not change the behavior.

Update 2

Oddly, when I move the query to the Data Source field and clear the Source Type I get an error. Not seen this before.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, Sitecore (at this time we're on 8.2 U2) lost its capability to have more than a single item provided as a data source.

Unfortunately, Query does not seem to be working in this version of Sitecore for when it returns more than 1 item AND SXA 1.2 breaks content search in data source mechanism altogether.

This will, however, have a workaround in SXA 1.3 where you will be able to use Lucene queries in the "query" item:

Once created, you will be able to use the query in Page List as follows.

In Rendering Parameters:

Select the query returning multiple items:

Answer 2

Try to build the query with + signs, like that: