How to show wordpress post in the site based on custom field value?

Question

Each of the wordpress post has one custom field as match_time. The value of match_time can be finished/live/not_started. I want to show posts which has match_time "live" on top, and then posts of match_time "not_started" and then "finished" posts. How to do it?

Answer 1

This worked for me as long as it's run only on the appropriate query. The key is MySQL's FIELD() function, which lets you specify an arbitrary ordering.

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'add_match_times_to_query' );

function add_match_times_to_query( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'meta_query', array(
            'match_time' => array(
                'key' => 'match_time',
                'compare' => 'EXISTS',
            ),
        ) );

        add_filter( 'posts_orderby', 'edit_posts_orderby_match_times' );
    }
}

function edit_posts_orderby_match_times( $orderby ) {
    return 'FIELD(meta_value, "live", "not_started", "finished") ASC';
}