relevanssi_orderby | relevanssi_order

apply_filters( 'relevanssi_orderby', string|array $orderby )
apply_filters( 'relevanssi_order', string $order )

Filters the orderby and order parameters before Relevanssi sorts posts.

Parameters

$orderby
(string|array) The orderby, either the key as string, or both key and order in array format. Default: relevance.

$order
(string) The order, asc or desc. Default desc.

More information

By default Relevanssi sorts posts in the descending order of relevance. One way to modify the ordering is to use these filter hooks.

The relevanssi_orderby hook can be used to set both orderby and order by using the array format. This is also the only method to use multiple orderings:

add_filter( 'relevanssi_orderby', function( $orderby ) { return array( 'post_title' => 'asc', 'relevance' => 'desc' ); } );

This would sort posts first by title ascending, then relevance descending. Single parameters can be set also using both filters:

add_filter( 'relevanssi_orderby', function( $orderby ) { return 'post_title'; } );
add_filter( 'relevanssi_order', function( $order ) { return 'asc'; } );

This would set the sorting to post title, ascending.

Possible sorting orders

Any post fields can be used for sorting. These include:

  • post_title (shorthand title can be used)
  • post_date (or date)
  • post_modified (or modified)
  • post_parent (or parent)
  • post_type (or type)
  • post_name (or name)
  • post_author (or author)
  • menu_order
  • meta_value and meta_value_num
  • relevance
  • rand for random order, rand(123) for seeded random order (see this KB post for instructions on random search results)

Custom field sorting

Custom field sorting is done with meta_value and meta_value_num. The difference between these is that meta_value values are sorted as strings and meta_value_num values are sorted as numbers.

The custom field name is taken from the meta_key query variable. If that does not exist, then Relevanssi checks the meta query and tries to find a key without a value.

If you are sorting using fields where not all posts have values, use relevanssi_missing_sort_key to provide a default value.

Comparisons

For date type fields Relevanssi uses strtotime() to convert the dates to timestamps and compares those.

For string fields strnatcasecmp() or strnatcmp() with mb_strtoupper() is used, with suitable fallbacks if that is not available.

For post types, the comparison order comes from the relevanssi_comparison_order filter hook.