No ordinary news post ordering

Question

I'm trying to work out how I can order news posts by postDate, unless a lightswitch is toggled for a post, at which point it will use the dateUpdated to order that item.

This is so a client can still change posts without them appearing at the top of the list (for corrections, etc), but also make substantial updates to certain posts and have them appear as the latest newest item.

Answer 1

You can do this entirely from the order param using MySQL’s CASE syntax:

{% set newsItems = craft.entries({
    section: 'news',
    order:   '(CASE field_myLightswitchField
                  WHEN 1 THEN elements.dateUpdated
                  ELSE elements.dateCreated
              END) DESC'
}) %}

Note that you’ll need to include that “field_” prefix before your Lightswitch field’s handle since this is a more complex condition and Craft won’t be sure if it should add that automatically.

Answer 2

I don't know if it's possible (but would like to see a query solution).

There is one problem with your setup: If an entry gets a "substantial update", you can't make a correction afterwards, since it would become the latest item again.

I propose you write a plugin which would:

• Wait for the 'onBeforeSaveEntry' event
• Check if the Lightswitch-field is "on"
• If true, set postDate to the current date
• Set the Lightswitch-field to "off" again

.

Quick-and-Dirty example:

public function init()
{
    parent::init();

    //Event: onBeforeSaveEntry
    craft()->entries->onBeforeSaveEntry = function(Event $event) {

        //Check if its the right section
        if ( $event->entry->section == 'news' ) {

            //Check if the lightswitch-field is "on"
            if ( $event->entry->lightswitch_field_handle == 1 ) {
                //Set postDate to current date
                $event->entry->postDate = $event->entry->dateUpdated;

                //Set Lightswitch-filed to "off"
                $event->entry->lightswitch_field_handle = 0;
            }

        }

        //Return
        return $event;

    };
}

If you add this function to your primary plugin class and sort your entries by postDate it should work just like you want.

Answer 3

I think I'd create a twig function or filter to create a custom sort (usort in php), pass the collection to the function so it's returned 'sorted'.

Would be interested in seeing if anyone has a nice craft.entries query straight off the bat for this though.

Answer 4

My SuperSort plugin is built for use cases exactly such as this. It allows you to render each object in your array using a Twig object template and sort the array based on the rendered value.

So, you could do something like:

{% set sortedEntries = entries | supersort('sortAs', '{{ object.myLightswitch == 'y' ? object.dateUpdated: object.postDate }}') %}