[Resolved] Sorting a View by a field managed as a number is not working

[Author]

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[Anthony]

This is a legacy Toolset site using Layouts, with Views ordered by a custom number field. Recently I was asked to add additional posts and noticed that posts were no longer displaying in the order specified in that custom field. You can see in the attached screenshot that when editing the View, the Ordering part of the Query section where previously "As a number" was selected is now greyed out, leading me to believe that the underlying code for the View 'has issues'...
I tested the site with all plugins except Toolset's disabled and the problem persists.

[Christopher Amirian]

Hi,

Welcome to Toolset. Please follow the troubleshooting steps below to see what might be the problem cause:

1) Confirm the field is actually numeric

- Go to Toolset → Custom Fields and open the field used for ordering.
- Confirm it’s a Number field (not text).
- Edit a few affected posts and make sure the value is digits only (no commas/symbols/spaces). Text values will break numeric sorting.

For more information:
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/sorting-is-not-working-properly/

2) Force numeric sorting via wpv_filter_query

You can force the numeric sort via code:

- Go to Toolset → Settings → Custom Code and add a new PHP snippet.

For more information:
https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/adding-custom-code/using-toolset-to-add-custom-code

add_filter( 'wpv_filter_query', function( $query_args, $view_settings, $view_id ) {

    if ( (int) $view_id !== 1234 ) {
        return $query_args;
    }

    $query_args['meta_key'] = 'wpcf-your-number-field';
    $query_args['orderby']  = array( 'meta_value_num' => 'ASC' );

    return $query_args;

}, 999, 3 );

1234 = your View ID

wpcf-your-number-field = your field meta key (Toolset fields typically start with wpcf-)

For more information:
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/order-view-by-post-title-then-by-custom-toolset-field/

Thanks.

[Anthony]

Thank you for your response.

1) I had already taken the steps you mention, plus other trouble-shooting, but thanks for the due diligence.

2) Thank you even more for providing the work-around code. Because I have 12 views that are affected by the ordering problem, I adjusted your code a little bit to allow for an list of View ids:

add_filter( 'wpv_filter_query', function( $query_args, $view_settings, $view_id ) {

// List of View IDs this should apply to
$allowed_view_ids = array( n1, n2, n3, ... );

if ( ! in_array( (int) $view_id, $allowed_view_ids, true ) ) {
return $query_args;
}

$query_args['meta_key'] = 'wpcf-custom-ordering-field';
$query_args['orderby'] = array( 'meta_value_num' => 'ASC' );

return $query_args;

}, 999, 3 );