List custom group field by month ascending

Hi Brian,

Real quick, can’t wait for the 3rd hotel booking case study post

The technical part is done. We're finishing some details in the post and will publish it soon.

and also would be great to see a 2020 roadmap post like you did in years past

Yes, we're planning to do the same this month. Timeline is quite tight in the last couple of months :(.

Add the ability for multi select to the date field

The problem is that the jQueryUI datepicker library doesn't support selecting multiple dates. I suggest setting the date field cloneable, so you can add more dates if you want.

If you want to query them, then there are 2 options (FYI, cloneable fields save data in serialized format, which makes normal query useless):

1. Using a plugin such as SearchWP/FacetWP (we have integrations for both)
2. Using another custom field. The idea is that when saving post, you get the saved dates, and save it into another field (plain text in any format you want)

2) Combine / merge two date field outputs. If I had a “start date” and “end date” how would I merge the two so the output would look like, May 24 – 29, 2020 or May 31 – June 4, 2020? So that I could then query by date and display all dates for say “May”.

You can combine the way you want. I'd suggest using something like "2020-05-10|2020-06-01", e.g. separating dates by a special character (|, :, #, @) and format dates in a standard format (Y-m-d). That way you can query by values.

3) Make “group fields” available within the select advanced field options.

Another way to think about this issue is using the Conditional Logic extension. E.g. when you select a value in the select advanced field, then show the corresponding group.

I hope my answers give you some ideas to implement that. These are advanced (and rare) use cases, and need some creative thinking.

Regarding multiple select dates – is there a jQueryUI that does support this? And if so would you all look into adding it? This would be a huge feature.

I'm afraid jQueryUI doesn't support this. You can see details here: jqueryui.com/datepicker/.

My suggestion is using clonetable date picker, which allows you to do the same thing.

Besides FacetWP how do you display data that’s cloneable / serialized?

For displaying data, please see this docs. You need to use some coding, though.

Regarding the last option, using the Conditional Logic extension – I’m not following. So I would create a new custom fields section and call it “trip-cal”. Then add a group field for each month (Jan, Feb, etc). Then add the Select Advanced field – but this is where I’m lost. How would I use the conditional logic to pull in my trip dates that are attached to different “custom field” group?

This is a sample code that I have: https://pastebin.com/5mc6jtJv. Please try it and see if that's similar to what you have in your mind.