Orderby Custom Date Not Working

Question

I am using ExpressionEngine 2.5.2 and am unable to get my entries to sort by a custom date field. I have two sites through the Multisite Manager that I am pulling entries from. On both sites, the custom date field short name is the same - "event_date". Here's the code:

{exp:channel:entries  site="site1|site2" channel="events" orderby="event_date" sort="asc" status="next event|open"  limit="7"}
<li>
    <span class="event-name"><a href="#">{title}</a></span>
    <span class="date">{event_date format="%d %M %Y"}</span>
</li>
{/exp:channel:entries}

Here is the result in the browser:

---

Berlin 2013 ... 05 Mar 2013

Tokyo 2013 ... 13 Feb 2013

London 2013 ... 17 Apr 2013

Los Angeles 2013 ... 16 May 2013

---

Berlin is a part of Site2, and its status is "Next Event". Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo are a part of Site1, and their statuses are all set to "open". Anyone know what's wrong?

Answer 1

You need to specify the field for each site individually:

orderby="site1_shortname:event_date|site2_shortname:event_date" sort="asc|asc"

What's happening right now is that it's matching the field name event_date to site 1 and ordering by that field for site 1, but using the default orderby (entry_date) for site 2.

(Docs.)

However, thinking about this further, this is actually expected behaviour. When specifying multiple orderby fields, it's sequential. So first you're ordering by field_id_X (whatever event_date is in site1). Well, site 2's entries are 0 in that field, so they come first.

You'd have to use a common field, like entry_date, to order entries from both sites sequentially together. (Check out EEvent Helper, which allows you to clone a custom date field to the Entry Date, among other things.)