Short answer: yes.

Maybe a bit more details... For example Tidypics has a page that lists photos in order of most recent comments. The code (in mod/tidypics/views/default/resources/tidypics/lists/recentlycommented.php) used to get the entities in the corresponding order is

$db_prefix = elgg_get_config('dbprefix');
$options = array(
    'type' => 'object',
    'subtype' => 'image',
    'limit' => $limit,
    'offset' => $offset,
    'joins' => array(
        "JOIN {$db_prefix}entities ce ON ce.container_guid = e.guid",
        "JOIN {$db_prefix}entity_subtypes cs ON ce.subtype = cs.id AND cs.subtype = 'comment'"),
    'order_by' => "ce.time_created DESC",
    'full_view' => false,
    'list_type' => 'gallery',
    'gallery_class' => 'tidypics-gallery'
);

$result = elgg_list_entities($options);

Of course, you would have to modify it a bit for other type of entities and implement it within a view that outputs it. For further reference you could take a look at the code of the Tidypics plugin.

Ismayil this was so close and way easier then what I was trying to do!  The only issue is its show the oldest post not the newest post.  Any ideas?

Maybe some finetuning is necessary, e.g. additionally to 'group_by' also

'order_by' => 'e.time_created DESC',

Just try with appending either ASC or DESC to the `group_by` and `order_by ' options values to see how it changes the order.

Im trying to use this example I found :

SELECT max(id) as id, 
   asker
FROM questions 
GROUP by asker 
ORDER by id DESC

Implemented in Elgg like the following:

$content = elgg_list_entities(array(
    'type' => 'object',
    'subtype' => 'file',
    'selects' => array("max(e.time_created) AS createdtime"),
    'order_by' => 'createdtime ASC',
    'group_by' => 'e.owner_guid',
));

But this doesn't seem to work still.  Any ideas?

Images taken on mobile devices save the image orientation in their exif metadata. If the program used to view the images doesn't make use of the exif data, the images are displayed in their original orientation. Most browsers (all browsers?) don't make an image orientation correction.

Tidypics does correct the orientation on image upload. For image files uploaded with the File plugin you can try out the Image Orientation plugin (https://elgg.org/plugins/1873029; maybe better try the latest release from https://github.com/arckinteractive/image_orientation).

(If I'm not mistaken, the future Elgg 3 will come with image orientation correction already in core.)

Figured it out. Memory issues...  Is it bad to max you Memory_limit?  I set it too 512M which is my max.  Is their pros and cons to this?

It might work with

offset = (int)get_input('offset', 0);
$limit = (int)get_input('limit', 16);
$db_prefix = elgg_get_config('dbprefix');
$meta_status_id = elgg_get_metastring_id('status');

$entities = elgg_list_entities(array(
    'type' => 'object',
    'subtype' => 'image',
    'limit' => $limit,
    'offset' => $offset,
    'joins' => array(
        "JOIN {$db_prefix}users_entity ue ON ue.guid = e.owner_guid",
        "JOIN {$db_prefix}metadata md4 ON (md4.owner_guid = e.owner_guid AND md4.name_id = $meta_status_id)",
        "JOIN {$db_prefix}metastrings ms4 ON md4.value_id = ms4.id"
    ),
    'wheres' => array(
        "ms4.string = 'active'"
    ),
    'group_by' => 'e.guid',
    'order_by' => "views DESC",
    'full_view' => false,
    'list_type' => 'gallery',
    'gallery_class' => 'tidypics-gallery'
));

I can't tell if this code is fully correct though (can't test your setup with the status metadata).

I received this error

An exception occurred while executing 'SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT e.guid) as total FROM elgg_entities e JOIN elgg_users_entity ue ON ue.guid = e.owner_guid JOIN elgg_metadata md4 ON (md4.owner_guid = e.owner_guid AND md4.name_id = 283801) JOIN elgg_metastrings ms4 ON md4.value_id = ms4.id WHERE ms4.string = 'active' AND ((e.type = 'object' AND e.subtype IN (11))) AND (e.site_guid IN (1)) AND ((1 = 1) AND (e.enabled = 'yes'))':

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query

QUERY: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT e.guid) as total FROM elgg_entities e JOIN elgg_users_entity ue ON ue.guid = e.owner_guid JOIN elgg_metadata md4 ON (md4.owner_guid = e.owner_guid AND md4.name_id = 283801) JOIN elgg_metastrings ms4 ON md4.value_id = ms4.id WHERE ms4.string = 'active' AND ((e.type = 'object' AND e.subtype IN (11))) AND (e.site_guid IN (1)) AND ((1 = 1) AND (e.enabled = 'yes'))

Difficult to say what might be wrong. "Lost connection to MySQL server during query" could mean a timeout issue or a out-of-memory issue of the MySQL server during the query. This might be because the query I suggested is wrong (as I said I can't test it because I don't have the necessary data you require, i.e. the status metadata). Or it might be that the query is correct as such but so complex that your server can't handle it due the limits set in the MySQL server config (timeouts, memory, cache sizes etc.). Maybe the query could get modified to require less server resources. But I can't say how because that's beyond my MySQL knowledge. Or it might be necessary to adjust the MySQL server config to be able to handle this query. But server config support is a complex matter on its own and I have to say it's beyond the support I can provide here.

Relationship query is passed to metadata query, so you can use all metadata options in the relationship ege*

Do you use icondirect.php for it?

$tmp = new ElggFile();
$tmp->owner_guid = $user->guid;
$tmp->setFilaname("tmp/upload.jpg");
$tmp->open('write');
$tmp->write(file_get_contents($photo_url));
$tmp->close();

$user->saveIconFromElggFile($tmp);

$tmp->delete();

if i launch a lightbox that contains comments, will hypeinteractions still work in the lightbox?

It should

ok, thanks - there are reasons why i am not using hypeInteractions - but i don't recall exactly why now.. i will look at it again soon.