Custom Post Type: Order posts by a group's field at archive page

• mariosnft

• September 24, 2018 at 10:30 pm

Hello guys,

I am trying to fetch all custom posts : missions
and sort them by a date picker field named: mission_date_start

I have created with ACF a fields group for my custom post type posts -> I created among others a group field named: mission_date that has two childs:
mission_date_start: type: date picker – return format ‘Ymd’ – key: field_5b9be275c6962
mission_date_end : type: date picker – return format ‘Ymd’

I created my archive page and has these arguments for my WP_Query

$today = date(‘Ymd’);
$args = array (

‘post_type’ => ‘missions’,

‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value’,

‘order’ => ‘ASC’,

‘post_status’ => ‘publish’,

‘posts_per_page’ => -1,

‘meta_key’ => ‘mission_date_start’,

‘meta_query’ => array(
array(
‘key’ => ‘mission_date_start’,
‘value’ => $today,
‘type’ => ‘DATE’,
‘compare’ => ‘>=’
)
)

);

—————————————————————————–

This is what is suggested from various places this question is asked. It doesn’t work.

I tried to change the values of ‘meta_key’ and ‘key’ to the fields key instead of name (field_5b9be275c6962) and doesn’t work.

I suspect that might be a problem that the field is inside a group field?? Don’t know…

Can someone help me?

• dgaitan

• October 3, 2018 at 6:47 pm

This should work with something like:

$args = array(
        'post_type' => 'your_custom_post_type',
        'meta_key'=> 'your_field_date',
        'orderby' => 'meta_value',
        'order' => 'ASC' 
    );

If you’re are working with the archive page, maybe a best way to do it is modify the main query with the pre_get_posts hook.

For Example:

// in your functions.php
function sort_by_date_my_cpt( $query ) {
   if ( is_post_type_archive( 'your_custom_post_type') ) {
      $query->set('meta_key', 'your_date_custom_field');
      $query->set('orderby', 'meta_value');
      $query->set('order', 'ASC');
      return;
   }
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'sort_by_date_my_cpt', 1);

So then, you will to use your WP Loop by default in your archive template.

// in your archive-your_custom_posttype.php or archive.php
<?php if ( have_posts() ) :
   <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
   <?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

• mariosnft

• October 9, 2018 at 6:45 am

dgaitan thank you for your reply.

I tried both ways suggested!
The pre_get_posts hook solutions looks so clean … though either did the trick!

When I placed the arguments suggested at the first solution no custom posts are fetched on my archive page.
When I edit the pre_get_posts hook it even erased all the text from the rest of the page (header and footer).

The only way it fetches results is when I remove from my args the meta_key and order_by options. Using this way though all custom posts are ordered by the date a custom post is published.

I find it really weird.