You are facing an XY Problem. The only reason to save meta values each as a single row, would be if you need them to be searchable. If you need specific sanitization rules, use either filter_var_array() or sanitize the values, then build the array and finally save the value. Gist with a comprehensive filter_var_array() example … Read more
I have solved my problem and it had nothing to do with the query, the database or the post type. The problem was that in trying to initially construct the query I had left a pre_get_posts function in my functions.php which was conflicting with my query. The lesson here for me is to make sure … Read more
The meta_value is not of an integer type for max to return proper values. You can use mysql cast method to convert into integers as follows: SELECT max(cast(meta_value as unsigned)) FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key=’price’
Both usermeta.meta_value and postmeta.meta_value are stored as LONGTEXT. Here’s how the MySQL docs describe the size of a LONGTEXT data type: “A TEXT column with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 or 4GB (232 – 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multi-byte characters. The effective maximum length of LONGTEXT columns … Read more
Thank you everyone for your help! In the end the query below got me the results I desired – which was to show and sort the posts by a custom field of “publication_date” first – sorting by the date, and if there were multiple of the same date (say, 4 marked June 2013), it would … Read more
Hi @Rob: The reason you can’t figure out how to do it is because it’s not possible, at least not without resorting to SQL. Try adding the following to your theme’s functions.php file: add_filter(‘posts_where’,’yoursite_posts_where’,10,2); function yoursite_posts_where($where,$query) { global $wpdb; $new_where = ” TRIM(IFNULL({$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value,”))<>” “; if (empty($where)) $where = $new_where; else $where = “{$where} AND {$new_where}”; … Read more