Filtering/Searching fields with enumerated data (e.g. Smart Map) in an ElementCriteria model I have an ElementCriteriaModel in which I need to find elements that contain a particular value for "state", which is a property of a "Smart Map" field ($element-&gt;smartMapField-&gt;state).

Filtering after a find would be easy, but I need to do this in the ElementCriteriaModel, as I am passing it to the 'criteria' option for ElementAPI (https://github.com/pixelandtonic/ElementAPI).
UPDATE
As of Smart Map 2.3.0, this is now possible!

https://plugins.doublesecretagency.com/smart-map/filtering-entries-by-subfield-value/


ORIGINAL
Currently, this isn't possible. However, it's a popular feature request which is rising quickly on the priority list.
The current workaround (as you noted) is to simply filter the results afterward.