get pages by meta data

The template tag, query_posts(), shows most of the arguments available to get_posts.

If by ‘meta data’ you are referring to custom fields, this should:

$postslist = get_posts('meta_value=commercials&numberposts=8');

[edit fixed example]

thanks for the help michael, but the problem with this is i need it to be dynamic. it needs to find out what the custom field is for this page and then find all the related posts.

meanwhile it wouldn’t let me put any php jargon in the quotation as far as i could tell.

You want to use Function_Reference/get_post_custom_keys then use the value you retrieve for your get_posts. So this example would use the last custom key found on a post to get 8 other posts with that custom field.

<?php
  $custom_field_keys = get_post_custom_keys();
  foreach ( $custom_field_keys as $key => $value ) {
    $valuet = trim($value);
      if ( '_' == $valuet{0} )
      continue;
    $post_custom_key = $value;
  }
  $postslist = get_posts('meta_value='.$post_custom_key.'&numberposts=8');
?>

thank you, works great!