Consider the following scenario.
CPT: event
Custom 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.
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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:
