Modify main WordPress loop with a parse_query filter

Ultimately all meta queries get run through _get_meta_sql.

The following coditional statement runs for any meta queries.

if ( empty( $meta_key ) && empty( $meta_value ) )
    continue;

There’s a ticket here for this which outlines what we should be able to do.
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/16735

What you can do however is purposely pass your query a meta_value your posts will never likely have and use the != (not equals) comparison, technically that should get you the right posts, eg..

$q->set( 'meta_key', 'my_key' );
$q->set( 'meta_value', 'WPSE_RULES!' );
$q->set( 'meta_compare', '!=' );
$q->set( 'orderby', 'meta_value' );

There’s one further thing though, you’ve got these the wrong way round before..

$q->set( 'order','title' );
$q->set( 'orderby', 'DESC');

  • order sets the which direction to order the results by, valid values are asc or desc (upper or lowercase).

  • orderby sets what to the order the results by, eg. date, title, meta value, etc..

I didn’t mention that there’s actually a new method for querying posts based on meta now, using the meta_query parameter, but seeing as that won’t avoid the problem i’ve mentioned above and older meta parameters still(in the end) get converted into a meta_query anyway, i’ll simply offer up a link to some examples.

http://scribu.net/wordpress/advanced-metadata-queries.html

Hope that all helps.. 🙂

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