Order Custom Posts by Several Fields

Question

I have a page that lists out the members of our band, as a custom post type.

I am trying to order the members by several custom fields, field by category, or "section, then by their class, and then by name. All these are entered as custom fields.

Any idea on how to do this? Here is the page: http://www.uconnband.org/members

Answer 1

You can do it with WP_Query:-

$query = new WP_Query( array ( 'post_type' => 'product', 'orderby' => 'meta_value', 'meta_key' => 'price' ) );

Replace 'price' with your meta key.

Reference:-

http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Order_.26_Orderby_Parameters

Answer 2

you can do something like this

//here is the code:-

function modify_query($query){
 //set this input in the orderby form
//and check if its from the form and the request something like this
if(!isset($_GET['check']) || $_GET['check'] != 'check')
    return;

//then you can change the query as per request
if ($query->is_main_query() && isset($_GET['orderby'])) {
    $query->set('orderby', 'meta_value' );
    switch($_GET['orderby']){
        case 'class':
            $query->set('meta_key', 'some_key');
            break;
        case 'section':
            $query->set('meta_key', 'other_key');
            break;
        //add like this
    }

}
}

add_action('pre_get_posts', 'modify_query');