Sort order by extra field

[HotAir]

Hi,

I've added a couple extra fields and have modified category.php to assign them to smarty variables so I can display them in subcategories.tpl.php.

I've like the page to display these listings sorted by one of the new extra fields.
The current sort order is defined in category.php like this:

$sSQL .= " ORDER BY ".MAIN_PRODUCT_SORT." ".MAIN_PRODUCT_SORT_OPTION.", p.dateadded DESC";

I'd like to replace p.dateadded with the correct extra field, but do not know how it should be referenced. The field I want to sort by is defined in the smarty degug console as 'StartDate' in the listing's array, and is displayed on the template with $entry.StartDate. The fID for this field is 6.

How do I reference this extra field to sort with it?

Thanks,
Jim

[Lhotch]

Are you talking about the javascript sort when the ads are displayed or you want to sort the query itself?

[HotAir]

I want to sort the query - I'm not using the javascript sort.

Thanks,
Jim

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by HotAir

I want to sort the query - I'm not using the javascript sort.

Thanks,
Jim

I have not found an easy way to accomplish this. Due to the flexibility of extra fields and the fact that some categories can have them and others may not the Extra fields are actually made up from two different database tables. One that holds the extra fields name and another that holds the extra fields value.

This means you would somehow need to include the extra fields in the main product query itself as opposed to collecting them after the inital query so they can be used to sort the data and I am not sure this is doable. I played around with it at one time and was having a heck of a time building a query to do it but I am far from an sql expert. If someone can build a query to do this I would also be interested.

I think in V4 this functionality is supposed to be built in.