Pagination with custom SQL query

Ok, I got there at the end. I couldn’t use WP_Query class as I really needed to have my own pretty big and complex SQL. Here is what I ended up having:

In functions.php I have my custom SQL and logic for counting the values needed for the WP pagination logic:

function vacancies_current( ){
    global $wpdb, $paged, $max_num_pages, $current_date;

    $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
    $post_per_page = intval(get_query_var('posts_per_page'));
    $offset = ($paged - 1)*$post_per_page;

    /* Custom sql here. I left out the important bits and deleted the body 
     as it will be specific when you have your own. */
    $sql = "
        SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS  {$wpdb->posts}.*
        FROM {$wpdb->posts}
        ....
        GROUP BY {$wpdb->posts}.ID 
        ORDER BY {$wpdb->posts}.post_date DESC
        LIMIT ".$offset.", ".$post_per_page."; ";   

    $sql_result = $wpdb->get_results( $sql, OBJECT);

    /* Determine the total of results found to calculate the max_num_pages
     for next_posts_link navigation */
    $sql_posts_total = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT FOUND_ROWS();" );
    $max_num_pages = ceil($sql_posts_total / $post_per_page);

    return $sql_result;
}

Then in my template file I’d have:

<?php 
    $vacancies_current = vacancies_current();
    /*followed by a standart loop to display your results */ 
 ?>
<div class="navigation">
    <div class="previous panel"><?php previous_posts_link('&laquo; previous vacancies',$max_num_pages) ?></div>
    <div class="next panel"><?php next_posts_link('more vacancies &raquo;',$max_num_pages) ?></div>
</div>

The trick was in supplying previous_posts_link() and next_posts_link the $max_num_pages value and obviously in calculating it correctly.

This works very well. Hope it will help someone 🙂

Dasha