Orderby not correct with smaller numbers, please ‘year’ param

Hi @182tage,

The problem is most likely that you’re using something like this to create your post meta:

wpp_get_views($post_ID, 'your_meta_key', true);

As per the documentation the third parameter, number format, tells the function whether to return a formatted number (eg. 1,234) or a non-formatted number (eg. 1234).

To be able to sort anything by meta_value_num, the meta value needs to be an actual number without any formatting (eg. 1234) so WP_Query’s sorting works as expected.

So if you’re storing formatted numbers in your post meta field WP_Query gets confused and doesn’t sort posts correctly.

So make sure that when storing views count as meta your function call looks like this instead:

wpp_get_views($post_ID, 'your_meta_key', false);

Last not least I would like to use the parameter “year” in addition to “day”, “week” and “month”. Would you add this option?

I’ll think about it, thanks for the suggestion!

I already gave a donation …

Donations are not required, I do appreciate the gesture though so thank you!

• This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by Hector Cabrera. Reason: Reworded for clarity

Small correction: with ‘your_meta_key’ I meant ‘your_time_range’ ??

Hi Hector,

sorry if i wasn’t clear enough.

The custom field used for sorting comes from the function you posted here (example for daily), which i placed in the functions.php.

function custom_wpp_update_postviews($postid) {

$accuracy = 100; // 100 for test purpose

if ( function_exists('wpp_get_views') && (mt_rand(0,100) < $accuracy) ) {
        update_post_meta(
        $postid,
        'views_daily',
        wpp_get_views($postid, 'daily', false)
    );
}

add_action('wpp_post_update_views', 'custom_wpp_update_postviews');

So there is no problem with number format for sorting by WP_Query.

The additional code line

wpp_get_views($post_ID, 'your_meta_key', false);

in the loop simply generates the content for displaying, there is no impact on sorting here. Additionally i tested it though. Either the parameter is true or false in this line or in your function custom_wpp_update_postviews has no impact on sorting. Probably the line

'meta_value_num' => 'DESC',

makes the typecast automatically.

The problem as to see here https://182tage.net/blog/test-heute still exists. For smaller numbers as for daily and weekly the sequence is wrong, also listing items with 0 views. For larger numbers as with monthly it works correct (so far as i can see). For example for daily the sequence is 4,3,1,0,0,1,2,0,0,0. There should not be any item with zero views in that list. The sequence should be 4,3,2,1,1 – finish.

There was a second question: Sorting should be possible with two orderby’s: First for the time range – and if there is more than one item with the same number of views it should be sorted by date of last view (DESC) additionally. Like this about:

'orderby'        => [
             'meta_value_num' => 'DESC',
             'XXX' => 'DESC'],

Where XXX could perhaps be the name of a custom field for the dates of last views. Is there any possibility for such a custom field?

Thank you for your advice!

Honestly no idea then. I don’t see any obvious issues with your code, at least not with the portions you’ve shared so far.

As people over Stack Overflow would say, try sharing a Minimal, Reproducible Example of your code to see if I can replicate the issue you’re having with your query here.

After some days of watching, comparing and analyzing i found out:

1. There is a time discrepancy between your function custom_wpp_update_postviews() and wpp_get_views().
2. wpp_get_views() ist working just in time (that means correct) but custom_wpp_update_postviews ist updated only about every second day.
3. As a result the sequence (produced by orderby phrase) is old whereas the shown views are fresh. And that looks like a wrong sorting.

The question is therefore how to refresh the data in the custom fields like views_daily more often, the best would be exactly in the same period as wpp_get_views(), simultaneously.

As i mentioned twice there is also still an issue with a second orderby, if the number of views in the listing is equal. Using your plugin’s shortcut this sorting is by date/time of last view. I have to emulate this and it would be great to know if there is an accordingly custom field for this.

You could try hooking into wpp_post_update_views to update your custom fields in real-time, note though this won’t likely be great for performance which is why I recommend using the other method instead.

Well thank you. When this way is blocked, i will try the way with

$wpdb->get_results()

to use a direct SQL-statement. A simple Query is needed with a subquery for the views per item. This should only need a few ten milliseconds. I think this discussion can be closed.