Title: Query posts order by multiple postmeta
Last modified: August 22, 2016

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# Query posts order by multiple postmeta

 *  [philiprabbett](https://wordpress.org/support/users/philiprabbett/)
 * (@philiprabbett)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/query-posts-order-by-multiple-postmeta/)
 * Some of my posts will have two meta_keys set called ‘meta_1’ and ‘meta_2’ while
   most will only ever have ‘meta_1’.
 * > ‘meta_1’ will always contain a number greater than 0
   >  ‘meta_2’ will either 
   > be set with a number 1 or will not be set
 * I’m trying to get all my posts from the database queried in such a way that posts
   with ‘meta_2’ are shown first with all posts ordered by ‘meta_1’.
 * What I have so far is getting posts ordered by ‘meta_1’ in either ascending order
   or descending order or posts ordered by ‘meta_2’ being set or not set.
 *     ```
       add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'get_posts' );
       function get_posts( $query ) {
         if( !is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() ) :
           $query->set( 'posts_per_page', '9' );
   
           switch ( $_GET['sortType'] ) :
             case 'ASC':
               $query->set( 'orderby', array( 'meta_value_num' => 'ASC' ) );
               $query->set( 'meta_key', 'meta_1' );
               break;
             case 'DESC':
               $query->set( 'orderby', array( 'meta_value_num' => 'DESC' ) );
               $query->set( 'meta_key', 'meta_1' );
               break;
             default:
               $query->set( 'meta_key', 'meta_2' );
               $query->set( 'orderby', array( 'meta_value_num' => 'DESC', 'title' => 'ASC' ) );
               $query->set( 'meta_query', array( 'relation' => 'OR',
                 array( 'key' => 'meta_2', 'value' => '1', 'compare' => '=' ),
                 array( 'key' => 'meta_2', 'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS' )
               ) );
           endswitch;
         endif;
       }
       ```
   
 * How can I show the posts with meta_key ‘meta_2’ on the top of the query results
   and have all posts ordered by meta_key ‘meta_1’?
 * Say I have 4 posts (p.ID 1, 2, 3, 4)
    - Post 1: ‘meta_1’ = 9
    - Post 2: ‘meta_1’ = 7, ‘meta_2’ = 1
    - Post 3: ‘meta_1’ = 3
    - Post 4: ‘meta_1’ = 2, ‘meta_2’ = 1
 * Posts should be returned as:
    - Post 4
    - Post 2
    - Post 3
    - Post 1

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [Lucas Karpiuk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karpstrucking/)
 * (@karpstrucking)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/query-posts-order-by-multiple-postmeta/#post-5687867)
 * Because some of the posts will not have `meta_2` I don’t think you’ll be able
   to use a `meta_query`. You might have better luck performing a direct SQL statement
   using `$wpdb` to retrieve the post IDs in the order you want and then passing
   those to `post__in` combined with the ‘post__in’ option for `orderby`.
 *  Thread Starter [philiprabbett](https://wordpress.org/support/users/philiprabbett/)
 * (@philiprabbett)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/query-posts-order-by-multiple-postmeta/#post-5687880)
 * Well I’m able to get all posts containing ‘meta_2’ showing first followed by 
   all those without…
 *     ```
       $query->set( 'meta_key', 'meta_2' );
       $query->set( 'orderby', array( 'meta_value_num' => 'DESC' ) );
       $query->set( 'meta_query', array( 'relation' => 'OR',
           array( 'key' => 'meta_2', 'value' => '1', 'compare' => '=' ),
           array( 'key' => 'meta_2', 'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS' )
       ) );
       ```
   

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘Query posts order by multiple postmeta’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [meta_query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/meta_query/)
 * [orderby](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/orderby/)
 * [pre_get_posts](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/pre_get_posts/)
 * [sort](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sort/)
 * [wp_query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp_query/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [philiprabbett](https://wordpress.org/support/users/philiprabbett/)
 * Last activity: [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/query-posts-order-by-multiple-postmeta/#post-5687880)
 * Status: not resolved

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