Ordering and limiting

Ordering

To add an order to the dynamic query, use the orderBy() method:

By default, this creates an ascending order on the given field. To add a descending order, specify the second parameter:

$query->orderBy('timestamp', 'DESC');

If called multiple times, the query will order by each specified field in the order this method is called. To order by an expression, add the expression with addExpression() first and then use the alias to order on.

To get the results in a random order, use the orderRandom() method:

$query->orderRandom();

EntityStorageInterface Queries

The order() and orderRandom() methods may not be available in queries generated from EntityTypeManager. Use sort() instead.

$storage = $this->entityTypeManager->getStorage('node');
$query = $storage->getQuery();
$query->condition('type', 'page')
  ->condition('status', 1)
  ->sort('title', 'ASC');

Limiting

By using the range() method, you can control the range of selectable records. The method has two parameters: the first is the start position of the range, and the second is the number of selectable records from the beginning of the range.

// Limit the result to 10 records
// where 0 is offset and 10 is limit
$query->range(0, 10);

The following example will instruct the result set to start at the 6th record found (the count starts at 0) rather than the first and to return only 10 records.

$query->range(5, 10);

Calling the range() method a second time will overwrite previous values. Calling it with no parameters will remove all range restrictions on the query.