Sorting posts by custom field's custom order

• wesleymiles

• August 22, 2014 at 11:58 pm

Hi, I’m at a loss with how to sort posts by an order that I choose.

The below code pulls in teachers from a location. I’d like them to sort by their role (a custom field) in this order ‘Director, Lead Teacher, Teacher, Assistant Teacher’.

$facultys = get_posts(array(
‘post_type’ => ‘faculty’,
‘order’ => ‘ASC’,
‘meta_query’ => array(
array(
‘key’ => ‘location’,
‘value’ => ”,
‘compare’ => ‘LIKE’,
),
array(
‘key’=> ‘role’,
‘value’ => ”,
‘compare’ => ‘LIKE’,
)
)
));

• Etic

• August 24, 2014 at 8:18 am

It would be this way (notice the orderby and meta_key properties):

$facultys = get_posts(array(
	'post_type’ => 'faculty’,
	'order’ => 'ASC’,
	'orderby' => 'meta_value', 
	'meta_key' => 'role'
	'meta_query’ => array(
		array(
			'key’ => 'location’,
			'value’ => ”,
			'compare’ => 'LIKE’,
		),
		array(
			'key’=> 'role’,
			'value’ => ”,
			'compare’ => 'LIKE’,
		)
	)
));

But, it seems that you want to order the post in a specific custom order which is not alphabetical or numerical (I’m saying that because ‘Assistant Teacher’ is after ‘Teacher’, while the rest are in a alpha order). In that case, you should create four get_posts queries (it could be the same in a loop, only changing the role value), each query with the specific role.

More useful info

• Etic

• August 24, 2014 at 8:25 am

Like this:

$roles = array('Director', 'Lead Teacher', 'Teacher', 'Assistant Teacher');
Also, roles could be populated from a taxonomy or from a custom post type.

Then:

$location = ''; // to be defined
$facultys = array();

foreach($roles as $role) {
	$posts = get_posts(array(
		'post_type’ => 'faculty’,
		'order’ => 'ASC’,
		'meta_query’ => array(
			array(
				'key’ => 'location’,
				'value’ => $location,
				'compare’ => 'LIKE’,
			),
			array(
				'key’=> 'role’,
				'value’ => $role,
				'compare’ => 'LIKE’,
			)
		)
	));

	// Merge the posts result with the existing facultys
	$facultys = array_merge($facultys, $posts);
}