How to build complex Element Criteria?
You can apply conditions within the same field but you can't create conditions for multiple fields.

Here are some great examples

$criteria-&gt;expiryDate = 'or, :empty:, =' . $yourDateValue;


However you can't combine conditions for multiple fields. So you can't say Where (fieldX = 4 OR FieldY = 5) you would have to create an sql object based on your ElementCriteriaModel and use Yii's great Query Builder for that and use the OrWhere function

$query = craft()-&gt;elements-&gt;buildElementsQuery($criteria);