Thread

This question may be related to a resolved thread.

Hi guys,
I’m trying to work out a bug with a client’s News page.  This is an overview page that basically displays all news items, which a user can then click in to “read more”  I’m having a difficult time trying to sort these entries by “newest first”.  The field is set up using Matrix with one column using the EE native date entry field.  This is the field I would like to sort by.  But when viewing the page, the News entries are sorting by the entry date, and not the date in the custom field.  Here is my template code.  It’s set up so that if no custom date is entered, it will use the entry date.  The custom field name is “newsdate”.  Also running EE version 2.4 Any help would be great!!

{exp:channel:entries channel="news" status="open|hidden" disable="categories|category_fields|member_data|pagination|trackbacks" start_on="2012-01-01 00:00" stop_before="2012-12-31 00:00" dynamic="no" show_future_entries="no" orderby="newsdate" sort="desc"}
        {if status == 'open' || member_group == '1'}  {!-- superadmins see hidden entries --}
          {news_article}
            <li>
              {exp:ce_img:pair src="{logo}" width="100"}{made}{/exp:ce_img:pair}
              
                <a href="http://{page_url}" title="{title}">{title}</a><span>{if newsdate == ""}{entry_date format="%m.%d.%y"}{if:else}{newsdate format="%m.%d.%y"}{/if} | <em>{source}</em></span>
                {blurb}
              
            </li>
          {/news_article}
        {/if}
      {/exp:channel:entries}

Hi soopafly,

I’m afraid you can’t order by a date field in a Matrix column. Channel Entries has no knowledge of that column until inside the tag pair, and then inside the matrix pair.

Part of the issue is that Matrix stores its data in a separate table, and in a serialized array.

Now, if that date field were in the channel fields proper, it should work.

You may want to check out Low Reorder. It let’s you built result sets based on custom ordering.

Cheers,

Thanks Dan,
So if I take that Date field out of the Matrix column, it would be possible to order by that custom date?

Hey there soopafly,

It should be possible once that field is no longer a Matrix FT.

Is there anything else I can help with?

Cheers,

Thanks Shane.. I’ll try that!

Hey soopafly,

Please let us know how it goes!

Cheers,