Sort pages by multiple keys

[a-ok]

What's the best way to sort two PageArrays by two separate keys using PW? I'm unsure if this is possible rather than using just PHP (but was curious to know if PW had such a way).

I have a page, 'Designers', and I have three fields for the children pages... title, firstname and lastname. If the designer is a person then they fill out all three fields, but if they are a collective/group then they just fill out the title. My plan would be to then create two queries... one returning only the designers with full names (first and last) and then the other returning collective/groups only.

$designers_person = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname!='', sort=designers_lastname");
$designers_group = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname='', sort=title");

What I then need to do is combine these two queries and sort them so there is an alphabetical order, for example...

Anni Albers (person)
Kate Blee (person)
Tord Boontje (person)
Commune (collective)
Javier Mariscal (person)
Studioilse (collective)

Any thoughts?

[LostKobrakai]

$designers_person = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname!=''")->each(function($designer){
	$designer->custom_sort = $designer->designers_lastname;
});
$designers_group = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname=''")->each(function($collective){
	$collective->custom_sort = $collective->title;
});;

$all = $designers_person->add($designers_group)->sort('custom_sort');

 

[a-ok]

6 minutes ago, LostKobrakai said:

$designers_person = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname!=''")->each(function($designer){
	$designer->custom_sort = $designer->designers_lastname;
});
$designers_group = $pages->find("parent=/designers/, designers_lastname=''")->each(function($collective){
	$collective->custom_sort = $collective->title;
});;

$all = $designers_person->add($designers_group)->sort('custom_sort');

 

This is nuts. I had no idea you could do this. Thank you!

[joe_ma]

Wow, this is great!

I've also got a sorting problem, maybe this could be achieved in a similar way? The problem is this:

I need a list of pages, that contains elements from the respective parent page. Is there a way to sort the list by a field that is only in the parent page? Something like:

$results = $pages->find("template=name-of-child-template, sort=parent->field-on-parent-template");

 

[Robin S]

8 hours ago, joe_ma said:

Is there a way to sort the list by a field that is only in the parent page?

You nearly had it

$results = $pages->find("template=name-of-child-template, sort=parent.field-on-parent-template");

 

[joe_ma]

Thanks Robin, exactly what I needed. Works like a charm.