Crazy complex Query with sorting and filtering. Totally stumped.

• chrissilich

• February 24, 2016 at 9:05 am

I have an Event post type with 2 fields (that matter for this), start_date (Date saved as Unix timestamp) and same_date_sort (Number).

I need to query for events with a start_date greater than today’s date. I also need to order them by start_date AND same_date_sort, so that if 2 events have the same start date, they’ll be in the same_date_sort order.

I’ve been writing WP_Querys and get_posts stuff for hours now and I’m stumped. Can you help me?

• John Huebner

• February 24, 2016 at 10:17 am

Have you looked at meta_query clauses https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/03/30/query-improvements-in-wp-4-2-orderby-and-meta_query/

• chrissilich

• February 24, 2016 at 10:19 am

Ahh, fantastic! WP need to update their docs I see. Thanks!

• chrissilich

• February 27, 2016 at 3:07 am

Here’s what I ended up with, and it seems to work.

$upcoming_query = new WP_Query(array(
	'post_type'		=> 'my_event',
	'numberposts'		=> -1,
	'posts_per_page'	=> 1000000,

	'meta_query' => array(
		'relation' => 'AND',
		'start_date_clause' => array(
			'key' 		=> 'start_date',
			'value' 	=> Carbon::now()->format("Ymd"),
			'compare' 	=> '>=',
		),
		'same_date_sort_clause' => array(
			'key' => 'same_date_sort', // higher number is earlier
			'compare' => 'EXISTS',
		), 
	),

	'orderby' => array(
		'start_date_clause' 		=> "DESC",
		'same_date_sort_clause' 	=> "ASC"
	)
	
));

The same_date_sort/EXISTS clause doesn’t do anything (they all have that field), but it lets me use same_date_sort_clause/ASC for sorting below.