Thread

The EE page needs to sort a list of weblog entries by a relationship entry (multiple, actually but it doesn’t matter right now). Right now there is some sorting going on, but it looks like it’s done by the sorting of the related entry’s entry_id. I’m trying to figure out if there is a way to specify a certain field.

So is this possible?

Note I cannot use the related weblog and list those entries because there are certain weblog statuses which need to be filtered on this page.

Thank you for your post.  In order to offer you the best support we can, could you take a moment to answer the following questions, from the Getting Help announcement.

1. Explain your goals and what you expected to happen. Then explain what actually
happened.

2. Post the error message, if any, that displayed.

3. Give a URL where the issue can be viewed.

4. Post example code. Make sure to use the code tag (click “code” on the button bar).

Example:

Your codes goes here

5. Post the EE build you are using. The build number can be found in the footer of the control panel pages.

Thank you.

Sure

1. I have weblog books with many related author weblog entries (sometimes multiple authors per book, in separate fields). I have a page which filters out books by certain statuses and sorts by these authors (primary author is ordered first, then second, then third, etc.). Code is pasted below, and I _think_ EE only looks at the author entry id #s. I added phony authors “A A” and “Z Z” and it looks like this is the case.

2. No error message.

3. URL is hidden right now, sorry.

4.

{exp:weblog:entries weblog='book' 
                    orderby='book_written_1|book_written_2|book_written_3|book_edited' 
                    sort='asc|asc|asc|asc'
                    show_expired='yes' 
                    show_future_entries='yes' 
                    dynamic='off' 
                    sticky='off' 
                    status='Backlist|open'}

HTML here

{/exp:weblog:entries}

5. Version 1.6.1 Build 20071114

Ok, now, that is great, thank you for clarifying - can you also clarify a bit on what you want the end result to display as? What is your goal?

Guess my writing is off. I said

“I have a page which filters out books by certain statuses and sorts by these authors (primary author is ordered first, then second, then third, etc.).”

I really mean to say is

“I have a page which filters out books by certain statuses and am trying to sort by the book authors’ names (ordered by first author’s name first, then second author’s name, then third, etc.).”

Ok, so I’m still confused by the problem you’re having.  orderby= should be ordering by the information you have in the custom fields you named there; that is not happening?  What do you mean by this:

Code is pasted below, and I _think_ EE only looks at the author entry id #s

I mean the orderby= is a related entry field.

So it is sorting by the related entry’s entry_id. I want to sort by its title, or another field if possible.

Oh!  I see, I missed that important clue.  So briefly, just to re-phrase, you want to sort the initial list of entries by the contents of a related field?  Have you considered using the reverse related entries tag instead?

Correct.

I have considered reverse relationships, but this is a many to many relationship. So there is a chance two authors could display the same book, which is not what I want.

This is definitely a customization that I’m going to have to move to how-to; other than reverse related entries, there isn’t an out of the box way to handle this that will meet your criteria. You may need to roll out some custom queries to achieve your goal here.