Display cheapest price

Either way should work although PHP might be a bit easier, certainly if you should ever decide to move beyond three fields in the future.

OK that sounds good. So here is my first attempt to read the “offer_price_inside” variable. This is an embedded template by the way, as it’s used a number of times on one page. I have used the {entry_id} tag to make each PHP variable unique.

I’m checking if the price variable exists using the {if} statement, otherwise applying a value of ‘0’.

{exp:channel:entries channel="offers" entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" dynamic="no"}

<?php

$offer_price_inside{entry_id} = {if offer_price_inside}{offer_price_inside}{if:else}0{/if};

echo $offer_price_inside{entry_id};

?>

{/exp:channel:entries}

But I get the following error on the page:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{’ in /home/sites/domainname.co.uk/public_html/brain/expressionengine/libraries/Functions.php(640) : eval()’d code on line 5

PHP is switched on for the template, and set to Output.

If you are wanting to output the lowest value between three custom fields, try something like:

{exp:channel:entries channel="offers" entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" dynamic="no"}

<?php
    echo min(array("{custom_field_price_1}","{custom_field_price_2}","{custom_field_price_3}"));
?>

{/exp:channel:entries}

Wow that works a treat. Thanks a lot.

However, if there is no value in one of the fields, it’s outputting no value (as it thinks this is the lowest value, I assume).

Is there a way to not include fields with no values?

In that case try this… You’ll need an if here since there would be an error if a user left 0 or empty values for all three fields.

{exp:channel:entries channel="offers" entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" dynamic="no"}

<?php
    $arr = array_filter(array("{custom_field_price_1}","{custom_field_price_2}","{custom_field_price_3}"));
    if (count($arr)) echo min($arr);
?>

{/exp:channel:entries}

Awesome. Worked like a charm. Thanks a lot. 😊

OK, here’s a further development on this one. A bit tougher this time.

So… we can now display the Cheapest price for a given Entry, using the above code. But is it possible to output a list of Entries in Cheapest/Dearest price order?

I know it’s kind of adding another level to the PHP processing, but I’m sure it must be possible.

Thanks a lot to anyone who might know the answer. 😊

It’s possible with a little more PHP, You can store all values for each entry in an array, then sort by lowest price of the lowest prices.

I wouldn’t do this on anything that has a very large amount of entries (where only a subset is shown), because it would require processing on every entry (even if they are not shown).

Something like this:

<?php entries = array(); ?>
{exp:channel:entries channel="offers" entry_id="{embed:entry_id}" dynamic="no" limit="1000"}

<?php
    $arr = array_filter(array("{custom_field_price_1}","{custom_field_price_2}","{custom_field_price_3}"));
    if (count($arr)) {
        $lowest_price = min($arr);
    } else {
        $lowest_price = ''; 
    }
    
    $minval = $lowest_price;
    // add leading zeros
    while(strlen($minval) < 10)){
        $minval = '0'.$minval;
    }

// get variables into php
$title = <<<EOT;
{title}
EOT;
$url_title = <<<EOT;
{url_title}
EOT;
$body = <<<EOT;
{body}
EOT;

    // store the custom variables in an array
    $entries[$minval.'|'.$url_title] = array(
        'title'        =>    $title,
        'url_title'    =>    $url_title,
        'body'         =>    $body
        'lowest_price' =>    $lowest_price);
?>
{/exp:channel:entries} 

<?php
     
    // sort the array by the key (lowest price, then url_title)
    $entries = ksort($entries); 

    // output the results  
    foreach ($entries as $entry){
        echo "lowest price: $lowest_price <a href="/$url_title">$title</a> body: $body";
    }
?>

This could be done more efficiently with an upper-level sql query (or stored procedure), which I would suggest if you intend on having a large quantity of entries here (more than 1k).