Thread

I’m using the channel entries tag to output a list of items in a channel, and I’m ordering by setting the orderby-attribute to the short name of a custom field which may or may not contain a number. The problem is that empty values are last in the ordering, when I want them to be first. So what I want is:

empty | empty | 2 | 4 | 100

While what I get is:

2 | 4 | 100 | empty | empty

Setting the order from asc to desc would reverse the whole thing obviously, but I only want the items with empty values to be shown first while keeping the list in ascending order. Any way to get this done?

Hi Geert,

It’s not possible to get the Channel Entries tag to do what you want here, but we might be able to get the Query module to do it. Could you show me the whole Channel Entries tag so that I can see the parameters and output you’re working with? I’ll see what I can come up with as an alternative.

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for your reply. Here’s the code:

<nav>
  <ul>
    <li class="home{if !segment_1} active{/if}"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li{if segment_1 == "campers"} class="active"{/if}><a href="/campers">Campers</a></li>
    {exp:channel:entries channel="pages" disable="categories|member_data|pagination" search:show_in_nav="Ja" search:nav_title="not IS_EMPTY" orderby="nav_order" search:page_uri="not IS_EMPTY" order="asc" dynamic="no"}
    <li{if segment_1 == url_title} class="active"{/if}><a href="http://{page_uri}">{nav_title}</a></li>
    {/exp:channel:entries}
  </ul>
</nav>

As you can see, this code serves up the main navigation. I’m using the pages module and a few custom fields (checkbox show_in_nav, text nav_title, text nav_order). It’s working pretty well, but I want the nav_order field to be optional, so that the client isn’t forced to input a number for every page. Which is why I want the empty fields to show up first and any numbered fields after that.

I’m also not sure if this is even a decent way to handle navigation, so any advice is appreciated. I think the Structure extension might be great for pages and navigation, but I’m trying to see how far I can go without adding another payed extension to the site.

Hmm… well if that’s the case, what sort of fieldtype are you using for the order? If you use a regular Text Input field and set the Field Content to Number, by default the value will be 0. If the user removes the value on the publish page and submits it blank, it’s 0. That would be the quickest way to solve this, and it’s actually the best way to set it up, too.

Aha! Thanks Kevin, changing the field content to number works nicely. Also noticed I had a parameter called order=“asc” in my tag, which should have been sort=“asc”. Those two changes fixed my problem.

Thanks again, topic may be closed now 😊

Thank you for the followup!

If we can do anything else in the future, please let me know!

Cheers,