How to sort by meta value?

by

How can I sort by meta value? In meta value I have “price” (float).

I make this query, but always get

Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.

$posts = query_posts( $query_string . '&orderby=meta_value_num&meta_key=Notes&meta_value_num=price&order=ASC');

Edit:

meta_value value:
"a:6:{s:5:"width";s:3:"580";s:6:"**price**";s:3:"99"".

Is it possible?

2 Answers
2

Your meta value is a serialized array.

What you’re asking it to get for you is all posts with a meta with the key 'Notes' and the value 'price'. Your meta value is not 'price', though, it’s 

a:6:{s:5:"width";s:3:"580";s:6:"price";s:3:"99"

The first thing you need to do to order by price is to start using a helpful key/value structure. I assume you’re using something like this to store the post meta:

update_post_meta( $post_id, 'foobar', array( 'width' => 580, 'price' => 99 ), true );

when your needs would indicate that you need to do something like this:

update_post_meta( $post_id, 'width', 580, true );
update_post_meta( $post_id, 'price', 99, true );

Once you have your meta values saved in that format, you’re going to want to use a meta_query:

global $query_string;
parse_str( $query_string, $my_query );
$my_query['meta_query'] = array(
    array(
         'key' => 'price',
         'value' => 0,
         'type' => 'SIGNED',
         'compare' => '>=',
    )
);
$my_query['orderby'] = 'meta_value_num';
$my_query['order'] = 'ASC';
query_posts( $my_query );

Meta queries are new in WordPress 3.1, so you’ll need to be using at least that version to do this.

Let me know if you run into problems!

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