Sort custom posts by date and then by taxonomy

Question

i am having this issues for month and i can't figure out how to solve this one:

I am working on a website, where you can check out cultural events in my region. This is just to let you know of what i'm talking about in general . mox-veranstaltungen.de

Now for the backend i have made a custom query to output a list of events by a given range of dates. These dates are actually the eventdates. (when those events take place) There are several events on one specific day.

$args = array(
    'post_type' =>  'events',
    'numberposts'   =>  20,
    'meta_key'  =>  'date',
    'orderby'   =>  'meta_value_num',
    'order'     =>  'ASC',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key'       =>  'date',
            'value'     =>  array ($von,$bis),
            'compare'   =>  'BETWEEN',
            'type'      =>  'NUMERIC',
        ),
        )

the date value is made with ACF and sorting on dates just works fine.

Now every event has also a taxonomy term of a taxonomy i called 'eventtype'. I need to sort events of a specific date to these taxonomy terms.

For example:

1. all events happen on the 4th of july
   • All events with the taxonomy term 'music'
   • All events with the taxonomy term 'plays'
   • All events with the taxonomy term 'fairs'
   • ...

I don't know how to solve this. I've extended the query above with this tax_query statement, which obviously is not working:

$allGenres = get_terms( array('taxonomy' => 'eventtype','fields'  =>'ids','hide_empty' => false));

$args = array(
    'post_type' =>  'events',
    'numberposts'   =>  20,
    'meta_key'  =>  'date',
    'orderby'   =>  'meta_value_num',
    'order'     =>  'ASC',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key'       =>  'date',
            'value'     =>  array ($von,$bis),
            'compare'   =>  'BETWEEN',
            'type'      =>  'NUMERIC',
        ),
        ),
        'tax_query' =>  array (
        array(
        'taxonomy'  =>  'eventtype', //taxonomy
        'field'     =>  'term_id',
        'terms'     =>  $allGenres //
        'orderby'   =>  array ('terms' => 'ASC')
        )
)); 

This orderby statement is just a shot in the dark, just some filthy code googling :) How i am solving this? I can imagine it's just a quite easy task, right? I am not a programmer but in some way

Answer 1

I'm not sure you'll be able to organize by category using a single query. You may need to sort by category first, then by date (or vice versa). I've taken the code from this answer and applied it to your situation, though the reverse may work better for you.

// First get all the categories
$categories = get_categories( array ('orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'asc' ) );

// Then for each category, run a query inside of it
foreach ($categories as $category) {

   echo "Category is: $category->name <br/>";

   $catPosts = new WP_Query( 
                   array ( 
                       'category_name' => $category->slug,
                       'orderby' => 'title' ) ); 

   if ( $catPosts->have_posts() ) {

       while ( $catPosts->have_posts() ) {
          $catPosts->the_post();
          echo "<a href='the_permalink()'>the_title()</a>";
       }

       echo "<p><a href='category/$category->slug'>More in this category</a></p>";

   } //end if
  


} //end foreach

wp_reset_postdata();