Order by date loop problem

• fanta00

• April 22, 2014 at 2:36 am

I am following instructions in documentation on how to order posts by the custom date field – and I’ve stuck. Mainly on the loop part,
here is the code from the tutorial:

<?php
 
/*
*  Create PHP DateTime object from Date Piker Value
*  this example expects the value to be saved in the format: yymmdd (JS) = Ymd (PHP)
*/
 
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', get_field('date_picker'));
echo $date->format('d-m-Y');
 
/*
*  Order Posts based on Date Picker value
*  this example expects the value to be saved in the format: yymmdd (JS) = Ymd (PHP)
*/
 
$posts = get_posts(array(
	'meta_key' => 'custom_order', // name of custom field
	'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
	'order' => 'ASC'
));
 
if( $posts )
{
	foreach( $posts as $post )
	{
		setup_postdata( $post );
 
		// ...
 
	}
 
	wp_reset_postdata(); // IMPORTANT - reset the $post object so the rest of the page works correctly
} ?>

I am not quite sure where do I put the code mentioned there, do I put it instead my loop, or inside it? I particularly stuck on this part of the code from the help, as it looks completely different then my loop:

if( $posts )
{
	foreach( $posts as $post )
	{
		setup_postdata( $post );
 
		// ...
 
	}

If I use ordinary WP loop then it works, but I can’t use the date part above it, cause then it displays nothing

Also another problem is I would like to display only posts from one category, and it doesn’t work, here is what I have:

<?php
 
/*
*  Order Posts based on Date Picker value
*  this example expects the value to be saved in the format: yymmdd (JS) = Ymd (PHP)
*/
 
$posts = get_posts(array(
	'meta_key' => 'event_date', // name of custom field
	'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
	'order' => 'ASC'
));?>

	<?php if (query_posts($posts . 'cat=23')) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		
		<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
			<div class="entry">
				<?php the_post_thumbnail( 'whatson-thumb' ); ?>
				<h2 class="pagetitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/inc/meta.php' ); ?>
				
			</div>

		</div>

	<?php endwhile; ?>
	<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>

	<?php else : ?>

		<h2>Not Found</h2>

	<?php endif; ?>

Thanks in advance!

• enorog

• May 5, 2014 at 1:24 am

You could use WP_Query for your basic loop (sorted by custom field ‘start_date’) like this:

$args = array(
	'post_type'		=> 'your_custom_post_type',
	'posts_per_page'	=> -1,
	'meta_key'		=> 'start_date',
	'orderby'		=> 'meta_value_num',
	'order'			=> 'DESC'
);
 
$wp_query = new WP_Query( $args );

while( $wp_query->have_posts() )
{
	$wp_query->the_post();
	// now use get_field() for custom fields
}

• enorog

• May 5, 2014 at 1:30 am

If you want to only display posts from a certain category id (or array of category ids), it’s just one extra line in the WP_Query arguments, like this:

$query = new WP_Query( 'cat=2,6,17,38' );

If you don’t want to use ID’s, you can do this:

$query = new WP_Query('category_name=staff');

You can of course combine this with the sorting by date from above – this is just one of the arguments.