WP archives order by custom meta key

Question

in Wordpress template's function.php following code is working well

// Function accepting current query
function my_change_order( $query ) {
    // Check if the query is for an archive
    if($query->is_archive())
        // Query was for archive, then set order
        $query->set( 'order' , 'asc' );
    // Return the query (else there's no more query, oops!)
    return $query;
}
// Runs before the posts are fetched
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts' , 'my_change_order' );

But i need to order articles by custom meta key like _my_meta_vip. Based on this answer i tried following lines, with half success, because only load articles with defined custom meta key, others are missing. How can i solve that?

function my_change_order( $query ) {
    if($query->is_archive())
        $query->set( 'orderby' , 'meta_value' );
        $query->set( 'meta_key' , '_my_meta_vip' );
    return $query;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts' , 'my_change_order' );

How can i order my articles by custom meta key properly?

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 17 '19 at 05:27

3

   function my_change_order( $query ) {
        // Check if the query is for an archive
        if($query->is_archive())
        // Query was for archive, then set order
        $query->set( 'order' , 'asc' );
        $query->set( 'meta_query', array(
            array(
              'key' => '_my_meta_vip'
            )
        ));

        // Return the query (else there's no more query, oops!)
        return $query;
    }

look at the following topic: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/20237/using-meta-query-how-can-i-filter-by-a-custom-field-and-order-by-another-one may give you a clear idea

edited Jan 17 '19 at 05:27

rhysclay

1,645
3
22
42

answered May 21 '15 at 00:32

jewelhuq

1,210
15
19

i can't see the difference and doing the same as my code. :( – eapo May 22 '15 at 19:34
see meta_query is send is assign & send through array – jewelhuq May 23 '15 at 16:13
still not showing posts without `_my_meta_vip` defined. – eapo May 26 '15 at 07:56

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 10 '15 at 14:57

Finally can't find any way to list all post with and without _my_meta_VIP defined.

In my solution all _my_meta_VIP was filled with enabled or disabled and the following code do the job:

    // Function accepting current query
    function my_change_order( $query ) {
        // Check if the query is for an archive
        if($query->is_archive()) {
            // Query was for archive, then set order
            $query->set( 'post_type', 'profile' );
            $query->set( 'orderby' , 'meta_value' );
            $query->set( 'meta_key' , '_my_meta_vip' );
            $query->set( 'order', 'DESC' );
        } else {
            // Return the original query for non-archive pages
            return $query;
        }
        // Return the query
        return $query;
    }
    // Runs before the posts are fetched
    add_filter( 'pre_get_posts' , 'my_change_order' );

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

It looks like the underlying issue here is that the query is doing an inner join on the posts and postmeta tables, which is why posts that don't have that particular post meta entry aren't being returned by the query. What you want is a left join. See this answer for an explanation of the difference.

You should be able to use the posts_join filter to replace the inner join with a left join:

add_filter('posts_join', function($join) {
    global $wpdb;

    // Replace inner join with left join
    $search = 'INNER JOIN ' . $wpdb->postmeta;
    $replace = 'LEFT JOIN ' . $wpdb->postmeta;
    $join = str_ireplace($search, $replace, $join);

    return $join;
});

WP archives order by custom meta key

3 Answers3