Using SQL Query on Custom Post Meta Data to Restrict Posts

Okay, I’ve made some progress; but there are still some pieces that won’t fit together. First, the good news.

The SQL query I had was okay, but needed some variables defined. I’d pored over the functions.php file and figured out the right syntax, and had taken the variable $new to be a WordPress defined class like $wpdb. It isn’t, so that needed to be defined. Here’s what I have:

function featureColumns ($feature_stub) {
$feature_stub = "Feature";
$now = current_time('mysql', 1);
$featurePosts = $wpdb->get_results(
"SELECT DISTINCT *
FROM $wpdb->posts, $wpdb->postmeta
WHERE $wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id
AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value='$feature_stub'
AND $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish'
AND $wpdb->posts.post_date <= '$now'
ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.post_date DESC
LIMIT 3");

This creates the function featureColumns which gives you a query object $featurePosts which holds all the stuff from the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables for any published post not post-dated after right now and which has the ‘meta_value’ of “Feature”.

The next step is to take this and, well, use it. So that you keep whatever formatting WP and any plugins provide, you need to wrap it in a filter function, too. So, in place of

<?php the_content() ?>

use

<?php echo apply_filters('the_content',$featurePost->post_content) ?>

Since we’re working around the limitations of the query_posts and get_posts functions, well, we don’t get to make use of the built-in Loop. We have to create our own. I commented out the entire business of

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

and added a foreach loop, to end up with

<?php // if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
foreach($featurePosts as $featurePost):

<!-- Post-level HTML and other stuff here... -->

endforeach ?>
So, that works well enough, and will give you your own Loop; but there are definitely limitations:

1. The posts don’t currently reflect to what categories they belong.
2. There is a SQL error with the comments for each of my test posts.

I’m sure there are others as well. I think that the primary reason for the issues is that the query object $featurePosts only includes content from the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables. Obviously, then, your index.php has no clue where to find stuff for your categories or comments.
I tried to include the wp_categories, wp_post2cat, andwp_comments tables as well, so that the $featurePosts object was “fully loaded”. That resulted in a page that wouldn’t load. I can only assume that that is a result of the sheer volume of data I’m trying to cram into that query object. I don’t know.

I’m not much of a coder of anything–not XHTML, CSS, PHP, or SQL–so if there is someone about with some stronger aptitude who can tell me where I’ve gone wrong, I’d happily fix this. I want at least to release a PHP file for inclusion, but there would be room for a nice little control panel to set the meta data and control stuff better. I have no idea how to make a plugin or add a control panel, though.

Daniel