List most recent items combined from Channel and Structure sections

Question

If we pass through an array of Channels & Structure sections we find that Channels entries tend to be listed first. So the first 15 will comprise of ChannelOne and ChannelTwo and then start listing the Structure section.

{% set homepageEntries = craft.entries({
    section: ['channelOne','StructureOne',channelTwo','StructureTwo'],
    limit: 15
}) %}

{% for item in homepageEntries %}
{{ item.title }}
{% endfor %}

All we want is a list of the 15 most recent items from a number of sections.

It does not look to be as straightforward as it seems. Creating multiple arrays of ids and merging still seems to produce the same results.

Answer 1

I was presuming that the default Order for Channels and Structure was postDate desc. But it turns out the default for Structure is sortOrder

{% set homepageEntries = craft.entries({
    section: ['channelOne','StructureOne',channelTwo','StructureTwo'],
    order: 'postDate desc',
    limit: 15
}) %}

Explicitly stating the order seems to fix this issue

Answer 2

I'm not exactly sure why what you're trying doesn't work, but there seems to be a workable solution in this post: How do I sort a collection of entries from multiple sections by date?.

For your example:

{% set channelOneIds = craft.entries.section('channelOne').ids() %}
{% set structureOneIds = craft.entries.section('structureOne').ids() %}
{% set channelTwoIds = craft.entries.section('channelTwo').ids() %}
{% set structureTwoIds = craft.entries.section('structureTwo').ids() %}

{% set homepageEntryIds = channelOneIds
    |merge(structureOneIds)
    |merge(channelTwoIds)
    |merge(structureTwoIds)
%}

{% set homepageEntries = craft.entries.id(homepageEntryIds).limit(15) %}

{% for item in homepageEntries %}
    {{ item.title }}
{% endfor %}

The sorting by postDate descending, is the default, but if you want to be explicit, you can add .order('postDate desc') just before the .limit when setting homepageEntries.