string based custom ordering in active record

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
If your database hasn't been normalised, then there's only so much you can do to compensate for the design flaws.

As I mentioned before, you can use a CASE statement in your SELECT query, and order by that.

Alternatively, just code your MySQL by hand instead of using the Active Record class.

However, I don't understand why you're using FIELD(), since that's not going to do what you want to anyway. What's wrong with:

Code:

$this->db->order_by('category', 'asc');

Perhaps if you post your table structure, we'd be able to get a better understanding of the problem.