Query and display only by first letter of the get_field value

Question

I can't find answer to my question, just hope you will find it relevant.

I'm working a magazine website and I need to display names of contributors in a list by family names. The contributors have been created by a custom taxonomy. Some of those names have more than one First names.

Example

S

Jane Gabriella Maria Sanchez
John Smith

So what I did is that I created a custom field for the family name. It works and put them in the right order. Here's my code the I created with the help of some resource here. The only thing I would like to be able to do now is to query only by the first letter of the get_field('family_name', $term). To been able to group them on my page. A, B, C, D.....

            <?php 

            $terms = get_terms('contributors');

            $args = array('contributors' => $term->slug);
            $query = new WP_Query( $args );


            $order_terms = array();
            foreach( $terms as $term ) {
            $position = get_field('family_name', $term);
            $order_terms[$position] ='<li><a href="'. get_bloginfo( 'url' ) . '/contributors/' . $term->slug . '">'.$term->name.'</a></li>';
            }

            ksort($order_terms);

            foreach( $order_terms as $order_term ) {
            echo $order_term;
            }

            ?>

Maybe it's not possible, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hope the below code block will help you. Please read the comments carefully. The code block-

// Your previous code.
// Say this is your $oder_terms variable
$order_terms = array(
    'Sanchez'   => 'Sanchez Link',
    'Smith'     => 'Smith Link',
    'Dramatist' => 'Dramatist Link',
    'Rashed'    => 'Rashed Link',
    'Munez'     => 'Munez Link',
    'James'     => 'James Link',
    'Jacky'     => 'Jacky Link',

);

ksort($order_terms);
// After ksort($order_terms); we get below array
/*
Array
(
    [Dramatist] => Dramatist Link
    [Jacky] => Jacky Link
    [James] => James Link
    [Munez] => Munez Link
    [Rashed] => Rashed Link
    [Sanchez] => Sanchez Link
    [Smith] => Smith Link
)
*/
// Now we need to group them on the basis of alphabet. Right ?

$new_order_terms = array();
foreach($order_terms as $key => $value) {
    $firstLetter = substr($value, 0, 1);
    $new_order_terms[$firstLetter][$key] = $value;
}

// Now if you do print_r($new_order_terms); your output will be
/*
Array
(
    [D] => Array
        (
            [Dramatist] => Dramatist Link
        )

    [J] => Array
        (
            [Jacky] => Jacky Link
            [James] => James Link
        )

    [M] => Array
        (
            [Munez] => Munez Link
        )

    [R] => Array
        (
            [Rashed] => Rashed Link
        )

    [S] => Array
        (
            [Sanchez] => Sanchez Link
            [Smith] => Smith Link
        )

)
*/
// All grouped by their first letter.

Answer 2

So I finally been able to solve my problem by using two fields that I added to my custom taxonony called "Contributors". One for the admin of the site to write the family name of each contributor and a field to tell in which letter group it belong.

I'm sure there would be easier way to code this but, with my limited nowledge in coding, that's the best I could do.

Here's my code:

            <!-- Letter A -->

            <?php 

            $terms = get_terms(array(
            'taxonomy' => 'contributors',
            'meta_key' => 'letter_group',
            'meta_value' => 'a'
            ));

            if(!empty ($terms)) {

            $args = array(
            'contributors' => $term->slug,  
            );
            $query = new WP_Query( $args ); ?>

            <section class="names">

            <h3>A</h3>
            <p>
            <?php

            $order_terms = array();
            foreach( $terms as $term ) {
            $position = get_field('family_name', $term);
            $order_terms[$position][] ='<a href="'. get_bloginfo( 'url' ) . '/contributors/' . $term->slug . '">'.$term->name.'</a><br>'; }

            ksort($order_terms);

            foreach( $order_terms as $a ) {
            foreach($a as $order_term)
            echo $order_term;}

            wp_reset_postdata();

            ?>

            </p>
            </section>
            <?php
            }
            ?>