[FIXED] CakePHP 3: Multiple Order results in pagination?

Issue

Need to order (sort) content in two way.

1: field "featured" can be 1 or 0 (default), need to show first content with featured "1" value,

->order(['featured DESC']);

2: field "featured_start" can be Y-m-d DATE or NULL (default), need to show first content with date, than with NULL value.

Like this

-| featured | featured_start |             created |-
-----------------------------------------------------
-|        1 |     2015-12-24 | 2015-12-24 10:06:07 |-
-|        1 |     2015-12-23 | 2015-12-22 09:01:29 |-
-|        1 |           NULL | 2015-12-24 09:01:29 |-
-|        0 |           NULL | 2015-12-24 10:01:29 |-
-|        0 |           NULL | 2015-12-20 20:20:45 |-
-----------------------------------------------------

Thanks.

Solution

SOLVED

->order([
    'featured DESC',
    '(CASE WHEN featured_start IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END),
    'featured_start DESC',
    'created DESC
 ]);

This returns a complex sorted data. Latest featured users are always at the top, followed by other users.

When the user subscription expires, the application via cron sets the value 0 in the "featured" field, and NULL in the "featured_start" field.

Answered By - Salines