Query Last Row of a Repeater Field

• paulmiddleditch

• November 9, 2016 at 8:12 pm

Hi,

I’m trying to query the last row of a repeater field so that I can display posts by date based on a specific field in the last row.

I have a field called ‘record’ with two subfields ‘date_in’ and ‘date_out’.

So far I can query the ‘date_in’ sub field and it orders my posts, but only based on the first row of the repeater field rather than the last.

Any help appreciated. This is what I have so far:

// filter
function my_posts_where( $where ) {	
	$where = str_replace("meta_key = 'record_%", "meta_key LIKE 'record_%", $where);
	return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'my_posts_where');

// args
$args = array(
	'numberposts'	=> -1,
	'post_type'	=> 'post',
	'meta_query'	=> 'record_%_date_in',
	'order'		=> 'ASC',
	'orderby'	=> 'meta_value',
	'meta_type'	=> 'DATETIME'	
);

// query
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args);

• John Huebner

• November 9, 2016 at 11:46 pm

There isn’t any way to do a query based on the last row of a repeater field. In order to do that you would need to have the same number of rows in every repeater and you’d need to replace the % in the query with the row number. For example, if a post has 5 rows the you’d query for ‘record_4_date_in’.

Querying by and ordering by repeater sub fields is always problematic and inconsistent. Rather than try to do this I’ve found that creating a consistent field that can be used is a better solutions. For example, lets say that you want to sort your posts by the last date_in sub field.

add_filter('acf/update_value/name=record', 'my_create_a_usable_field', 10, 3);
function my_create_a_usable_field($value, $post_id, $field) {
  // $value will hold a nested array with the rows of the repeater
  if (!is_array($value)) {
    // the repeater is empty, bail early
    return $value;
  }
  $last_row = end($value);
  $date_in = $last_row['date_in'];
  // now put it into a different field
  // this field can be used in queries for filtering and sorting
  update_post_meta($post_id, 'filterable_date_in', $date_in);
}

Please not that you may need to do more with the value, for example, converting it into correct MySQL date format. I’m not sure what the value of a date field will be at this point. At any rate, this is a little more work, but gives you what is needed in a form that’s usable.

• paulmiddleditch

• November 10, 2016 at 12:25 am

This reply has been marked as private.

• paulmiddleditch

• November 10, 2016 at 11:03 am

Hi, so I realised from the comments I still need to query this new field. I’ve added in the query to order posts by date with the newly created field, unfortunately to no avail. Any Ideas:

add_filter('acf/update_value/name=record', 'my_create_a_usable_field', 10, 3);
function my_create_a_usable_field($value, $post_id, $field) {
  // $value will hold a nested array with the rows of the repeater
  if (!is_array($value)) {
    // the repeater is empty, bail early
    return $value;
  }
  $last_row = end($value);
  $date_in = $last_row['date_in'];
  // now put it into a different field
  // this field can be used in queries for filtering and sorting
  update_post_meta($post_id, 'filterable_date_in', $date_in);
}

// args
$args = array(
	'numberposts'	=> -1,
	'post_type'		=> 'post',
	'meta_query'		=> 'filterable_date_in',
	'order'			=> 'ASC',
	'orderby'		=> 'meta_value',
	'meta_type'		=> 'DATETIME'	
);

// query
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args);

• John Huebner

• November 11, 2016 at 11:30 am

The value stored by ACF is not a valid “DATETIME”. try numberic, or just delete the meta_type argument. and ‘meta_query’ for how you’re using it should be ‘meta_key’

You’ll also need to manually update every post to get the values of the new field into the database.