How to sort news based on an XField

[FI-DD]

With the help of this code you can sort your news based on the value of an XField.

In inc/show.news.php find this:

Code: Select all

foreach ($query as $bg => $row){

and add above:

Code: Select all

if (isset($sortbyxfield)){

   $path_to_xfields = '../data/xfields-data.txt';
   
   foreach (file($path_to_xfields) as $name => $value) {
      list($id, $xfieldsdata) = explode("|>|", trim($value), 2);
      $xfieldsdata = explode("||", $xfieldsdata);
      foreach ($xfieldsdata as $xfielddata) {
         list($xfielddataname, $xfielddatavalue) = explode("|", $xfielddata);
         $xfields_data[$id][$xfielddataname] = $xfielddatavalue;
      }
   }

   if (!function_exists("sortbyxfield")) {
      function sortbyxfield($a, $b) {
         global $xfields_data, $sortbyxfield;
         

         if ($xfields_data[$a['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]] == $xfields_data[$b['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]]){
            return 0;
         }
         else{
            if(strtolower($sortbyxfield[1]) == 'asc'){
               return ($xfields_data[$a['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]] < $xfields_data[$b['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]]) ? -1 : 1;
            }
            else{
               return ($xfields_data[$a['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]] < $xfields_data[$b['id']][$sortbyxfield[0]]) ? 1 : -1;
            }
         }
      }
   }

   usort($query, 'sortbyxfield');
}

How to use it:

Add something like this to your include code:

Code: Select all

$sortbyxfield = array('test', 'ASC');

"test" is the name of the XField and "ASC" is the order. You can show news in an ascending order ("ASC") or in a descending order ("DESC").

[scottdallas]

I know this is probably a stupid question but I can't think of many scenarios where you'd want to sort by an XField and I am confused about whether or not it sorts alphabetically when you use ASC and DESC?

In other words, could someone provide an scenario where this would be useful?

[FI-DD]

If you have an XField called "sticky" with the values 0 (not sticky) or 1 (sticky) you can show the sticky articles first when sorting by XField "sticky".

Or let's say you have an XField called "priority" with values from 1 to 5. So now you can show the most important articles first.

I think there are many scenarios where this hack might be usefull.

[scottdallas]

That makes sense, thank you... got my gears goin two very good examples