Nested Post Query, first catagory, then per ACF

Replies: 0

Hey all!

I’ve got a question I want to do the following:
Generate page with all the posts sorted per category and then per custom field.
I’ve got the following code as a function for a shortcode.

Now I already know how to do this per category. I can split the posts per category and give is a nice title per category. But now I need to know how to do the same per pre-divined custom field. Say, “customfield_01”.

	<?php
	global $post;

	$categories_array = array();
	$thecategories = get_categories();
	foreach( $thecategories as $category ){
		$categories_array[] = $category->slug;
	}

	if($atts[ 'category' ]){
		$atts[ 'category' ] = explode( ",", $atts[ 'category' ] );
	}

	//collect values, combining passed in values and defaults
	$values = shortcode_atts(array(
			'category' => ''
		),$atts);

	$categories = get_categories( array(
			'orderby' => 'name',
			'parent'  => 0,
			'slug'    => $values['category']
		) );

	$current = get_the_ID($post->ID);

	foreach ( $categories as $tax ) :

		// List posts by the terms for a custom taxonomy of any post type
		$args = array(
			'post_type' => 'products',
			'orderby' => 'ASC',
			'posts_per_page'=>-1,
			'category_name' => $tax->slug
		);
		$the_query = new WP_Query( $args ); ?>
			<?php if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : ?>
				<?php while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); ?>
					<!-- magic -->

				<?php endwhile; ?>
				<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
			<?php endif; ?>
	<?php endforeach; ?>

Looking at this code I get the feeling I first need to make an array with all the different values of field “customfield_01” of the current category.

Does anyone know how to do this?
Or maybe even more efficient? 🙂

Many many thanks for any suggestions !