Custom sorting of channel entries

Question

I need to allow custom sorting of a channel entries loop, so I'm currently achieving this by using segments and URLs like this: mywebsite.com/products/sort/date/asc and mywebsite.com/products/sort/price/asc with the following code:

<ul>
  {exp:channel:entries channel="product" orderby="{segment_3}" sort="{segment_4}" pagination="bottom"}
    <li>{title}</li>
  {/exp:channel:entries}
</ul>

This works fine for ordering by date and other custom fields, but the downside is that the URLs can get a bit ugly as I need to add the custom field short name to the URL, e.g. mywebsite.com/products/sort/cf_product_ugly_custom_field/asc

My workaround has been to name the custom fields I wish to sort by from my usual format of {cf_product_price} to {price}, but this doesn't feel like an elegant solution.

Can anyone think of a more elegant way of doing custom sorting, without having to have the custom field in display in the URL like this? Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

Stephen, simple conditionals are parsed before modules tags. Because of this, you can put them inside your opening channel:entries variables.

I put more custom fields on this example to make it more clear.

<ul>
  {exp:channel:entries channel="product"
    {if segment_3 == "price"}
    orderby="{cf_product_price}"
    {/if}
    {if segment_3 == "brand"}
    orderby="{cf_product_brand}"
    {/if}
    {if segment_3 == "foo"}
    orderby="{cf_product_foo}"
    {/if}
    {if segment_3 != "price"}{if segment_3 != "brand"}{if segment_3 != "foo"}
    orderby="{segment_3}"
    {/if}{/if}{/if}
    sort="{segment_4}"
    pagination="bottom"
  }
    <li>{title}</li>
  {/exp:channel:entries}
</ul>