Title: Reverse loop order.
Last modified: August 22, 2016

---

# Reverse loop order.

 *  [guilherme-neo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guilherme-neo/)
 * (@guilherme-neo)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-loop-order-1/)
 * I realize this has been asked before. 4 years ago, in fact: [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-loop-order](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-loop-order).
 * However I think the answer was extremely unsatisfactory, and unfortunately that
   thread has been closed.
 * Of course I’ve looked up the documentation for WP_Query, however there doesn’t
   seem to be an option to invert the loop order (‘order’ reverses the query order,
   but this doesn’t play well with ‘posts_per_page’; I want to reverse the result
   set, not the query itself. Reversing the query results in a different result 
   set).
 * I’m aware this may require the query results to be fully fetched from the database
   server before reordering, but is there a way to do that without having to throw
   away The Loop interface? I don’t want to have to modify all my templates just
   to have them using my reversed posts array instead of the_title(), the_content(),
   etc.
 * Is there a way around that? Can I insert a custom array back into The Loop, for
   example? Or is there some other way of reversing the result set in the WordPress
   way?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Thread Starter [guilherme-neo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guilherme-neo/)
 * (@guilherme-neo)
 * [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-loop-order-1/#post-5657990)
 * I’m not sure this is the way it should be done, but it works well enough.
 *     ```
       function teceduc_query_vars_pre_get_posts_filter($query) {
       	$GLOBALS['teceduc_query_vars'] = $query->query_vars;
       }
   
       function teceduc_reverse_results_posts_request_filter($sql) {
       	$inner_sql = $sql;
       	if(!empty($GLOBALS['teceduc_query_vars']['reverse_result_order'])) {
       		$outer_sql = "SELECT ";
       		$inner_sql = str_replace('SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS ', '', $inner_sql, $replacement_count);
       		if($replacement_count >= 1) {
       			$outer_sql .= 'SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS ';
       		}
       		$outer_sql .= "* FROM (";
       		if(!preg_match('/ORDER BY (.+\.(.+)) (ASC|DESC)/i', $inner_sql, $inner_order_by_clause)) {
       			return $sql;
       		}
       		$order_by_target = $inner_order_by_clause[1];
       		$order_by_target_column = $inner_order_by_clause[2];
       		$inner_order = strtoupper($inner_order_by_clause[3]);
       		$outer_order = [
       			'ASC' => 'DESC',
       			'DESC' => 'ASC',
       		] [
       			$inner_order
       		];
       		$inner_sql = str_replace('wp_posts.*', "wp_posts.*, $order_by_target AS _reverse_order_filter_target", $inner_sql);
       		$outer_sql .= $inner_sql . ") AS inner_query ORDER BY _reverse_order_filter_target $outer_order";
       		$sql = $outer_sql;
       	}
       	return $sql;
       }
   
       add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'teceduc_query_vars_pre_get_posts_filter');
       add_filter('posts_request', 'teceduc_reverse_results_posts_request_filter');
       ```
   
 * If WordPress renames the wp_posts table or adds quotes or backticks around it
   or around the order by clause, or another plugin creates a subquery that contains
   another order by clause (like I just did…), or if anything else I didn’t anticipate
   changes, the query will probably silently fail unless debug mode is enabled… 
   But that’s good enough, I guess, amirite?
 * In order to invoke this behavior, WP_Queries must have a ‘reverse_result_order’
   option set to true (or another truthy value), like this:
 *     ```
       $query = new WP_Query ([
       	'post_type' => 'agenda',
       	'meta_key' => 'start_date',
       	'meta_compare' => '>=',
       	'meta_value' => date_format(new DateTime('@' . strtotime($start_offset)), "Ymd"),
       	'posts_per_page' => $limit,
       	'orderby' => 'meta_value',
       	'reverse_result_order' => true,
       ]);
       ```
   
 * I’m still waiting for someone to tell me of a better way to do this, but if there’s
   no better way, maybe I should turn this into a nice plugin?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Reverse loop order.’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [posts per page](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/posts-per-page/)
 * [reverse order](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/reverse-order/)
 * [the-loop](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/the-loop/)
 * [wp_query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp_query/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 1 reply
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [guilherme-neo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guilherme-neo/)
 * Last activity: [11 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reverse-loop-order-1/#post-5657990)
 * Status: not resolved

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