Is there a way of displaying an entry twice depending on postDate and a custom field date in one loop?

Question

I'm building a feed of entries mixed from different sections. One section contains a postDate and a custom field date called releaseDate. I want these entries to appear in the feed with their postDate, but when the releaseDate is equivalent to now I want the entry to return in the feed in order of appearance. Is this possible?

I've tried something like this:

craft.entries.section(['section1', 'section2']).order(['postDate DESC', 'releaseDate DESC'])

Answer 1

You could probably do this purely from Twig / a template, but I think it's going to end up being much easier from a plugin / PHP.

The general gist of it would be:

1. Grab all entries from section 1 ordered by postDate.

2. Grab all entries from section 2 ordered by releaseDate.

3. Create a new array and loop through 1 and 2 inserting via your custom sorting logic.

4. Return that new sorted array back to the template.

Answer 2

As an alternative, you could also simply create the first entry as usual, setting the post date to the post date. Then use a plugin like AM Command to duplicate the entry, add 'is out now!' to the title, alter any other content as needed, and set the post date to the release date. This would give you a lot more flexibility regarding title and content, etc., and without the need for a custom plugin. The game entry itself could even be in an entirely separate channel and pulled into any news related to it via a related entries field. This would allow you to create other news events as well, such as 'release delayed!', etc.