Orderby custom field (meta_key)

Try moving the ‘about_order’ meta_key outside the meta_query, like this:

$args = array(
	'orderby'  => 'meta_value',
	'meta_key' => 'about_order',
	'meta_query' => array(
		array(
			'key'     => 'job_title',
			'value'   => null,
			'compare' => '!=' // Make sure the user's job title field has a value (i.e. job_title != null)
		)

	), // End of meta_query
	'fields'  => 'ID',
	'exclude' => array(
		1
	),

);

The ‘orderby’ parameter does not accept ‘meta_value’ as a value. See this section of the Codex for valid options.

In order to do what you want, you’ll need to re-order the WP_User_Query results in PHP.

Try this:

/* Employee Query for About page */
function it4_get_users_with_job_title() {
    $args = array(
        'meta_query' => array(
            array(
                'key'     => 'job_title',
                'value'   => null,
                'compare' => '!=' // Make sure the user's job title field has a value (i.e. job_title != null)
            )
        ), // End of meta_query

        'fields'  => 'ID',
        'exclude' => array( 1 ),
    );
    $user_query = new WP_User_Query( $args );
    $user_ids   = $user_query->get_results();
    $meta_key   = 'about_order';

    return it4_sort_users_by_meta_key( $user_ids, $meta_key );
}

/**
 * Sort Users By Meta Key
 *
 * @param array $user_ids
 * @param string $meta_key
 *
 * @return array|boolean
 */
function it4_sort_users_by_meta_key( array $user_ids, $meta_key ) {
    $user_order = array();
    foreach( $user_ids as $user_id ) {
        $user_order[$user_id] = intval( get_user_meta( $user_id, $meta_key, true ) );
    }
    asort( $user_order );

    return array_keys( $user_order );
}

What this new function does is accept two parameters — your array of user ids, which you got from your WP_User_Query, and the meta key you want to sort your users by. It then loops through the array of user ids, assigning each user id as a key in a key=>value pair to a new array called $user_order. The values in that array are the integer values of the meta key (i.e. ‘about_order’ ).

Finally, it runs the PHP function asort() on the new array, which sorts the $user_id=>$meta_key pairs by $meta_key, from lowest to highest, and returns a new array of $user_ids in that order.

Hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch…

@vtxyzzy In that request, the ‘ORDER BY’ is set to the column ‘meta_value’, which doesn’t exist. The expectation of Jonathan (above) is that ‘meta_value’ would be replaced by ‘about_order’, which is a custom user meta field.

To confirm, take a look at wp-includes/user.php, lines 415-437 (in WP v3.5.2). You can see how WP_User_Query handles the orderby parameter…it does not handle ‘meta_value’ as a parameter.

The is indeed a interesting thread.

I was wondering if this could be used to sort a alphabetic list of CPTs by a certain meta key?

I have at listings site with persons as CTPs and I need to list them alphabetic by surname. On each I have a CF with value=surname. But I cannot find the missing link between a array and the CF.. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Sure thing vtxyzzy. Sorry about that 🙂