Orderby meta_key only working on first row in repeater

• pabeln

• September 29, 2018 at 1:46 am

I’m trying to order my posts by repeater fields but it only orders by the first repeater row not all repeater rows on each post.

Each post has a repeater line_on_form within this is a field called “line_number”. Posts can have more than one line_on_form row. But I want it to sort by both the first row first and the second row second.

My query args:

$sub_args = array(
  'numberposts' => -1,
  'post_type' => 'change_item',
  'meta_key' => 'lines_on_form_$_line_number',
  'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
  'order' => 'ASC'
);

Current output:

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 44

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 13

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 23

Desired output (notice the second line number in each is ordered ASC):

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 13

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 23

<Example post title>
line on form -> line number 40
line on form -> line number 44

Is this even possible?