Title: Creating Custom Plugin: Need help with query_posts
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Creating Custom Plugin: Need help with query_posts

 *  Resolved [Jesse Friedman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/professor44/)
 * (@professor44)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/)
 * Let me start by thanking anyone out there willing to help with this problem.
 * I am in development of custom plugin and everything’s going well.
 * The plugin does it’s job and comes up with a list of posts to display. This list
   is an array called $provIDlist and it contains a list of post id numbers.
 * I then use query_posts to display the posts as you can see in the below code.
   This works beautifully except for the order of things.
 *     ```
       $args = array(
       'posts_per_page' => 25,
       'post__in' => $provIDlist,
       'orderby' => none
       );
       echo query_posts($args);
       ```
   
 * What I want is the posts to display in the order they exist in the array. Right
   now setting the ‘orderby’ to ‘none’ it actually displays them in ascending order
   of post_id. So “none” isn’t really no order.
 * Is there anyway to have the posts display in the order they are queried from 
   the array?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * (@michaelh)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/#post-1392649)
 * With 3.0 there might be a better way but for now this is an example of the only
   way I could do that…
 *     ```
       <?php
         function filter_orderby($orderby = '') {
         $orderby = " FIELD(ID, 350, 194, 306, 1, 421)";
          return $orderby;
         }
       add_filter('posts_orderby', 'filter_orderby');
           $args=array(
             'post__in' => array(350,194,306,1,421),
             'caller_get_posts'=>1
           );
           $my_query = new WP_Query($args);
           if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
             echo '5 ORDERED Posts';
             while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
             <p> <?php the_category(', '); ?> -
             <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></p>
              <?php
             endwhile;
           } //if ($my_query)
         wp_reset_query();  // Restore global post data stomped by the_post().
       ?>
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [Jesse Friedman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/professor44/)
 * (@professor44)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/#post-1392681)
 * [@michaelh](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * Thank you for the reply, I’ve taken what you shared and modified it a bit. In
   the section below how can I replace the list of posts with an array?
 * `$orderby = 'FIELD(ID, 21748, 18589, 18591, 18613, 18641, 18661, 18683, 18777,
   18807, 18826, 18868, 18907, 18934, 19038, 19045, 19117, 19129, 19136, 18577)';`
 * I would like it to look like this:
 * `$orderby = 'FIELD(ID, $provIDlist)';`
 * I’ve tried it a million ways and can’t get it to work the way I want. However
   if I write out all the posts the way you have it, it works beautifully.
 * thanks, again
 *  Thread Starter [Jesse Friedman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/professor44/)
 * (@professor44)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/#post-1392685)
 * I fixed it:
 *     ```
       function filter_orderby($orderby = '') {
       global $provIDlist;
       foreach ($provIDlist as $id_item)$orderitby .= ', ' . $id_item;
       $orderby = 'FIELD(ID' . $orderitby . ')';
   
       //echo $orderby;
       return $orderby;
       }
       ```
   
 * I had to run the $provIDlist array through a foreach to parse out each id
 * Let me know if you have any ideas on how to better perform that task.
 * thanks
 *  [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * (@michaelh)
 * [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/#post-1392687)
 * this?
 *     ```
       $provIDlist = implode(',',$provIDlist);
       ```
   

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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## Tags

 * [query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query/)
 * [query_posts](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query_posts/)

 * 4 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-custom-search-need-help-with-query_posts/#post-1392687)
 * Status: resolved

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