How to Orderby User Role?

Question

Im looking to order posts by the users role... I currently have 2 user roles (intending to create more), and they are "Premium User" and "User", and some poss created by "Admin"

All of these posts are on one page, and i would like all the posts that are written by the "Premium User" at the top, then the rest underneath.

I have currently accomplished this with 2 separate loops, however, as the site grows there will be need for pagination to be added, and with 2 separate loops, this isnt going to work.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks,

Answer 1

This one's a little difficult, as there's no default user role meta key or post data. The only thing we got is the user ID.

// Get the posts
$posts_by_author_ID = get_posts( array(
     'post_type'   => 'post'
    ,'post_status' => 'publish'
    ,'orderby'     => 'post_author'
    ,'order'       => 'DESC'
) );
foreach ( $posts_by_author_ID as $post )
{
    static $user;

    $new_user = get_user_by( 'id', $post->post_author );

    // Let's save some queries
    if ( 
        isset ( $user ) 
        AND $user->ID === $new_user->ID
    )
        continue;

    $user = $new_user;

    foreach ( $user->roles as $role )
    {
        $posts_by_author_role[ $role ] = array( 
             'user' => $user
            ,'post' => $post
        );
    }
}
// Sort by key a.k.a. role
ksort( $posts_by_author_ID );

echo '<pre>'; // Only for debugging/developing - should get deleted when done
foreach ( $posts_by_author_ID as $role => $data )
{
    list( $user, $post ) = $data;
    // Now we can output our data
    // The user data is saved inside $user
    // The actual post data is saved inside $data

    // The following is only for debugging/developing - should get deleted when done
    var_export( $user, false );
    var_export( $post, false );
}
echo '</pre>'; // Only for debugging/developing - should get deleted when done