Sort posts based on a repeater field "Start_date"

• damon

• March 19, 2017 at 6:16 pm

I have a course page i which I use a repeater field called “sub_seminars” with date pickers “start_date” & “End_Date” inside to display course start and end date.

Now in my archives page I want to sort the courses based on the start_date which has a meta_key of sub_seminars_0_start_date.

I get the posts sorted if I use this code

$posts = get_posts(array(
	'post_type'			=> 'dt_portfolio',
	'posts_per_page'	        => -1,
	'meta_key'			=> 'sub_seminars_0_start_date',
	'orderby'			=> 'meta_value',
	'order'				=> 'ASC'
));

However I lose the category filter. I just takes the posts from dt_portfolio and sorts them out. I want it to sort the posts that are generated by individual taxonomy values.

e.g sort posts with venue los-angeles

my archive page looks like this

?php

$posts = get_posts(array(
	'post_type'			=> 'dt_portfolio',
	'posts_per_page'	        => -1,
	'meta_key'			=> 'sub_seminars_0_start_date',
	'orderby'			=> 'meta_value',
	'order'				=> 'ASC'
));

/**
 * The main template file.
 *
 * This is the most generic template file in a WordPress theme
 * and one of the two required files for a theme (the other being style.css).
 * It is used to display a page when nothing more specific matches a query.
 * E.g., it puts together the home page when no home.php file exists.
 * Learn more: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
 *
 * @package presscore
 * @since presscore 0.1
 */

// File Security Check
if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) { exit; }

$config = Presscore_Config::get_instance();
$config->set( 'template', 'blog' );
$config->set( 'layout', 'list' );
$config->set( 'template.layout.type', 'list' );
$config->set( 'post.preview.media.width', 30 );

get_header(); ?>

			<!-- Content -->
			<div id="content" class="content" role="main">

				<?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>

					<div class="articles-list">
					
						<?php do_action( 'presscore_before_loop' ); ?>

						<?php update_post_thumbnail_cache(); ?>

						<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
								                                                
                                                 <?php
							// populate config with current post settings
							presscore_populate_post_config();

							presscore_get_template_part( 'theme', 'blog/list/blog-list-post' );
							?>
                                              																	                                                  
						<?php endwhile; ?>

						<?php do_action( 'presscore_after_loop' ); ?>

					</div>

					<?php dt_paginator(); ?>

				<?php else : ?>

					<?php get_template_part( 'no-results', 'blog' ); ?>

				<?php endif; ?>

			</div><!-- #content -->

			<?php do_action('presscore_after_content'); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Any kind of help is appreciated.

• John Huebner

• March 26, 2017 at 1:52 am

WP will automatically sort posts based on taxonomy/term by using the correct link and instead of creating a custom query to get the posts you use a pre_get_posts filter https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/pre_get_posts.

The main problem you’re going to have is sorting the posts by a repeater field. You say that the repeater sub field is sub_seminars_0_start_date, but if you have multiple repeater rows then you will also have sub_seminars_1_start_date, sub_seminars_2_start_date, sub_seminars_3_start_date, etc. This is where you’re going to have a problem. It is virtually impossible to sort posts based on a repeater sub field value, unless you repeater will only ever have a single row or if you only care about the first row.

• damon

• March 26, 2017 at 3:40 am

You are right, I do have these fields. However I only want to sort the posts based on the first meta key sub_seminars_0_start_date
I don’t bother about the other fields. Just this one

• John Huebner

• March 26, 2017 at 4:04 am

Like I said, WordPress create URLs for each of the terms in the taxonomy. These pages automatically only show the posts for a specific term.

What you are doing here is overriding the query that WP has already done

$posts = get_posts(array(
	'post_type'			=> 'dt_portfolio',
	'posts_per_page'	        => -1,
	'meta_key'			=> 'sub_seminars_0_start_date',
	'orderby'			=> 'meta_value',
	'order'				=> 'ASC'
));

You either need to add a taxonomy query to this in order to recreate what WP is already doing… this is a waste, will take more work, and will slow down your site because you’re doing multiple queries when they are not needed….

… or you can set up a pre_get_posts filter https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/pre_get_posts to add the new sort order to the query that WP is already performing.

	
// add to functions.php	
function order_dt_portfolio_by_repeater($query=false) {
	
	// only used on main query on front end of site
	if (is_admin() || !$query || !is_a($query, 'WP_Query') ||
		!$query->is_main_query()) {
		return;
	}
	
	// modfiy a custom post type to show and order by meta value
	if (isset($query->query_vars['post_type']) &&
			$query->query_vars['post_type'] == 'dt_portfolio') {
		$query->set('meta_key', 'sub_seminars_0_start_date');
		$query->set('orderby', 'meta_value');
		$query->set('order', 'ASC');
		$query->set('posts_per_page', -1);
	}
} // end function blunt_pre_get_posts
add_action('pre_get_posts', 'order_dt_portfolio_by_repeater');

• damon

• March 26, 2017 at 9:09 pm

Thanks for the reply John but this didn’t work for me. The order remains still the same !!

• John Huebner

• March 27, 2017 at 2:21 am

Then you’ll also need to add a tax query to your query. See the WP_Query() doc https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

I can’t say how you’ll need to incorporate this, but it will involve figuring out what taxonomy/term WP is already using.

Either that or there’s some debugging you’ll need to do in what I’ve provided. The code I provided was not tested, it was put together based on the information you’ve given.