Order posts by meta value and Date

Question

I'm trying to sort posts based on one post meta value and date. I'm using this plugin ( https://github.com/JonMasterson/WordPress-Post-Like-System ) to add like system to my posts.

The code that I've is as follows.

$args = array(
    'numberposts' => 15,
    'offset' => 0,
    'category' => 0,
    'meta_key' => '_post_like_count',
    'orderby' => 'meta_value_num post_date',
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'suppress_filters' => true 
);

$recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts( $args );

The plugin adds a meta key _post_like_count to the table if at least one person like the post. The above code just returns posts which have at least one like count ( say 3 out of 15 ).

How do I get the remaining posts which don't have the meta key and sort them based on the date?

Answer 1

If you want both posts that have and do not have a meta key, you need an OR relation meta query to select both posts with key and those where it does not exist.

$args = array(
    'meta_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'OR',
        array(
            'key' => '_post_like_count',
            'compare' => 'EXISTS'
        ),
        array(
            'key' => '_post_like_count',
            'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
        )
    ),
    'orderby' => 'meta_value_num post_date',
    'order' => 'DESC'
);

$recent = new WP_Query( $args );