ORDER BY ACF date field, but empty fields should be considered

• Flaschenzug

• January 26, 2022 at 1:35 pm

Hello everyone,

I created a “date” field with ACF (called: “showed_last”) and I would like to order the posts by the showed_last field. The ordering itself is not a problem, just using a meta_query like this:

'meta_query' 		=> array(
	              	
		              array(
			              'key'			=> 'showed_last',
			              'compare'		=> '<=',
			              'value'			=> date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
			              'type'			=> 'DATETIME'
		              )
	              ),
	              'order'				=> 'ASC',
	              'orderby'			    => 'date',
	              'meta_key'			=> 'showed_last',
	              'meta_type'			=> 'DATE',

The problem: Some of the posts does not have a date in the beginning and just get one later. And they should be showed first.

So an example.

there are 3 posts
post 1 -> showed_last: 20220114 0:0:0
post 2 -> showed_last: 20220117 0:0:0
post 3 -> showed_last: (empty/NOT EXISTS)

The order should be:
post 3 (because never showed)
post 1 (last showed 14th of january)
post 2 (last showed 17th of january)

Is there a way to acomplish this?

Right now I get the right order but see only post 1 and post 2.

Thanks for your help

• Flaschenzug

• January 27, 2022 at 8:51 am

Found a work around, but if there is a better solution for the query, I would be happy 🙂

Workaround: just add a date in the past as default value

// default value for "showed_last" field
function default_start_date($field) {
	$field['default_value'] = "2000-01-01 00:00:00";
	return $field;
}
add_filter('acf/load_field/name=showed_last', 'default_start_date');