Okay, so I think you wouldn’t really need to use the Get Custom Field Values Plugin, because it seems there are now lots of ways to get at custom fields without using a plugin, as described here.
In fact, that page tells us something very interesting:
The PostMeta information is stored in a new table, $wpdb->postmeta. This table has four fields:
meta_id: A unique id for each entry
post_id: The ID of the post for this metadata
meta_key: The name of the ‘key’
meta_value: The value associated with the key
The values from this table are pulled into a structured multi-dimensional array called $post_meta_cache, just after the $posts array is fetched in wp-blog-header.php. This variable will only contain values for the list of posts fetched for the current page build.
Cool. So, since the information is already there, it seems there would have to be a way to order by the meta_values assocated with a given meta_key. Right?
But what is it?
I think a lot of people would really dig it if we could come up with a way to do this. It would allow you to sort things in all kinds of useful ways.
In a site with reviews about music, you could have a meta_key:genre and sort by the meta_values:rock, hip hop, folk, blues, etc.
In a site about future or past events, you could have meta_keys: Year, month, and day; and sort by the meta_values assigned to them.
Figuring this out would do a lot to make WordPress into even more of a mult-functional CMS. Custom fields have got to be more useful than just telling the world your mood. Anyone care to help out?
