Custom SQL Ordering for Sorting Events in Bricks

Consider the following scenario.

CPT: eventCustom field: event_date (of type Date)

Sample posts with post titles matching the meta value for convenience:

Requirement:

Show the events ordered by the event date with all current/upcoming events in ascending order and then all past events in descending order.

After implementing the tutorial:

This Pro tutorial provides the steps to create a custom sorting system that orders events by displaying future events first in ascending order, followed by past events in descending order, all within a single database query in Bricks.

Split (multiple) queries and post-query PHP sorting using a Bricks filter are two other ways of getting the same result. But a custom SQL ORDER BY clause has several advantages like performance, scalability for large datasets and pagination support.

Step 1

Create event CPT and a corresponding field group having event_date field.

Add event posts and populate the field for each. We shall only pull the events for which the event date has been set.

Step 2

Define a custom function to modify the ORDER BY clause for event queries.

Add the following in child theme's functions.php (w/o the opening PHP tag) or a code snippets plugin: