orderby post_views is not 'recognized' in pre_get_posts

@beee, your code looks ok. Please try playing with action priority:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'alter_query_for_faq', 20 );

or

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'alter_query_for_faq', 0 );

Yeah the code works perfectly except the orderby doesn’t seem to work.
Adding several priorities between 0 and 9999 didn’t change a thing.

I just read this on the get_posts explanation:

Also note that even if ‘suppress_filters’ is true, any filters attached to pre_get_posts are still applied—only filters attached on ‘posts_*’ or ‘comment_feed_*’ are suppressed.

Could this be related ? Not 100% sure if it’s related.

This is related – “suppress_filters” has to be set to false (for example we force that in our pvc_get_most_viewed_posts() function, because get_posts() sets “suppress_filters” to true by default.);

What if you try to set the orderby query parameter in parse_query action (it’s very similar to pre_get_posts but gets fired earlier)

i used this… all i got was one result…

function alter_query_for_faq_pq($query) {
    if ( !is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() && is_post_type_archive( 'faq' ) ) {
        $query->query_vars['posts_per_page'] = '20';
        if ( class_exists( 'Post_Views_Counter' ) ) {
            $query->query_vars['orderby'] = 'post_views';
            $query->query_vars['order'] = 'DESC';
            $query->query_vars['suppress_filters'] = false;
        } else {
            $query->query_vars['orderby'] = 'rand';
        }
    }
}
add_action('parse_query', 'alter_query_for_faq_pq');

maybe try settting orderby and optionally suppress_filters in that action, but keep the rest in pre get posts.

did that but same as above, 1 result only…

it appears the culprit is this line

$query->query_vars['orderby'] = 'post_views';

because if i remove it i get the results I want, just not ordered the wayI want…

Ok, contact us via our page – we’ll send you a beta version.

Maybe that fixes the issue – if not, we’ll try to do some more testing.

done

btw where are the views stored ?

the beta didn’t fix anything, neither does the new version.

i managed to fix it but not sure if it’s because of the new version or my altered code.

This is what I use now… everything in parse_query instead of pre_get_posts.

function alter_query_for_faq($query) {
    if ( !is_admin() && $query->is_main_query() && is_post_type_archive( 'faq' ) ) {
        if ( class_exists( 'Post_Views_Counter' ) ) {
            $query->query_vars['orderby'] = 'post_views';
            $query->query_vars['order'] = 'DESC';
            $query->query_vars['posts_per_page'] = '20';
            $query->query_vars['suppress_filters'] = false;
        }
    }
}
add_action('parse_query', 'alter_query_for_faq', 99);

I’m just happy it works the way I want.

Maybe the suppress_filters did the trick.

But that should be like that by default.

who knows ?? i’m happy with the result.

but where are the views stored ?

in a separate database table (basically for performance reasons, especially on large sites).

but we’ve provided a set of native WP_Query extensions to make use of it just like with normal query parameters.

where can i find those ?