Query not ordering correctly by datepicker date

• AustinDW

• June 2, 2020 at 12:30 pm

I am trying to order a series of pages based on a custom field value for the date.

The pages are ordering as:

July 24, 2016
January 4, 2016
April 14, 2019

I need the order to be:

January 4, 2016
July 24, 2016
April 14, 2019

This is the code in a WP Query:

'meta_key' => 'my_publish_date',
'meta_type' => 'DATE',
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'order' => 'ASC',

I have the Display Format and Return Format to return the value of F j, Y (Month Day, Year)

I’ve tried numerous alterations to the query to affect the order, but the issue remains

Any suggestions?

• John Huebner

• June 2, 2020 at 10:30 pm

'meta_type' => 'NUMERIC',
OR
'meta_type' => 'CHAR',

• AustinDW

• June 3, 2020 at 1:14 am

No luck.

I confirmed that the date is being stored in the YYYYMMDD format within the database.

• John Huebner

• June 3, 2020 at 2:46 am

Date fields are not stored in “DATE” format which would be “Y-m-d H:i:s”. That is the only issue that I saw with your query.

• AustinDW

• June 3, 2020 at 5:53 am

That’s why I’m confused. Been working with ACF for a while and custom fields in general, but this one has me stumped.

The dates & corresponding post_ids are as follows so even if it wasn’t reading the custom field and default ordering by post ID, I’d still expect it to be in order, and the post names follow a similar hierarchy. It should be falling in the correct order regardless of the field, title, or post id.

20160724 – post_id: 2392 – “product 2”
20160104 – post_id: 2390 – “product 1”
20190414 – post_id: 2394 – “product 3”

I’m well and truly stumped. Anyone have this issue and care to share their solution or things to check?

• John Huebner

• June 3, 2020 at 7:48 am

I would look for a pre_get_posts filter that might be interfering with your query. Not always an easy task because these can be anywhere.

• AustinDW

• June 3, 2020 at 8:01 am

What’s odd is that it will work for a field with just a general numerical value. It’s just the date that’s the breakdown.

The only “pre_get_posts” filter I have is in regards to stopping empty search returns. I disabled it and the issue continues.

I’ll keep looking but this … it doesn’t make sense.

• AustinDW

• June 3, 2020 at 11:31 am

Okay, found the problem. It existed between the keyboard and chair. *head desk*

Thanks for your patience, John!