Sorting by file date

Is there a way to sort posts using the date of a file specified in a TV of the post? The post is a short description of the contents of the file. The file changes more often than the needed description so I would like to sort the posts with the files date. Or even better - sort by the latest date of the file or the post. Is this possible?

Is the TV a file or text TV?

It’s a text TV.

Until Ditto supports function callbacks for sorting, you could write an @EVAL in a separate TV to get the date of that file. Then have Ditto sort by that TV.

Excellent! I will try that.

Thank you!

Is there a way to get around the problem of @EVAL working in the context of the calling page? To get the TV value, I need the documents ID, but using $modx->documentIdentifier returns the ID of the page with the Ditto call. Jason suggests using Dittos placeholders, but I’m not sure how that would be done.

There was a thread several months back where someone figured out how to get the value from one tv, manipulate it with an @EVAL TV, and save it to a third. He would have had to come up with a workaround.