get_posts does not order by menu_order

[ggus]

I'm writing a plugin that makes use of custom post_types. The plugin (in the back-end) aims to manage a group of custom posts children of the actually edited custom post. I manage the ordering via the menu_order.

a statement like

get_posts('post_type=whatever&post_parent='.$post->ID.'$orderby=menu_order&order=ASC')

does not order by menu_order, instead it returns the elements ordered by the default order (id?)

As reported in
​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/get_posts-not-using-orderbymenu_order#post-1006470
and also as stated in this bug fix:
​http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6731
there is in the core file query.php at line 2147 (WP Version 3.0.1)

switch ( $orderby ) {
  case 'menu_order':
  break;

In this way every request to order by menu_order gets ignored.

It seems that query_posts function is unaffected by this, so

 query_posts(array('post_type' => 'whatever', 'post_parent' => $post->ID , 'order' => 'ASC', 'orderby' => 'menu_order'));

does work, but I fear there are some implications in using query_posts instead of get_posts.

There is a solution proposed in the same page
​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/get_posts-not-using-orderbymenu_order#post-1006470

that fixes the bug by changing the code to

case 'menu_order':
  $orderby = "$wpdb->posts.menu_order";
  break;

[ryan]

This request:

get_posts('post_type=page&orderby=menu_order&order=DESC');

Produces this query:

SELECT wp_trunk_posts.* FROM wp_trunk_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_trunk_posts.post_type = 'page' AND (wp_trunk_posts.post_status = 'publish') ORDER BY menu_order ASC LIMIT 0, 5

menu_order is properly represented in the query and the pages are ordered as expected. That case statement is unnecessary but doesn't seem to hurt anything. Further, the Pages admin screen does orderby='menu_order title' just fine.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to ggus:

get_posts('post_type=whatever&post_parent='.$post->ID.'$orderby=menu_order&order=ASC')

Shouldn't it be &orderby=menu_order instead of $orderby=menu_order?

[johnjamesjacoby]

Confirmed Ryan's code and I had the same thoughts as Sergey.

Closing as worksforme.

[F J Kaiser]

I got the same issue as "ggus" (reporter):

// note: same result with & without reset
wp_reset_query();
query_posts( array( 'post_type' => 'whatever', 'post_status' => 'publish', 'order_by' => 'menu_order', 'order' => 'DESC' ) );

produces:

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.post_type = 'whatever' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish') ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 10

[SergeyBiryukov]

Shouldn't it be orderby instead of order_by?

[F J Kaiser]

Replying to SergeyBiryukov:

Shouldn't it be orderby instead of order_by?

Absolutely right. Thanks for your comment.