I have 5 different custom post types. I am showing 15 latest post from them on my home page using following query:
$query = new WP_Query( array (
'posts_per_page' => 15,
'post_type' => array ( 'cpt1', 'cpt2', 'cpt3', 'cpt4', 'cpt5' )
)
);
It works fine, shows latest 15 posts from these 5 custom post types.
But problem is, there are too many updates on cpt1 and cpt3 (around 8-10 posts per day on each post type). So on home page, I rarely find posts from cpt2/4/5.
So I want to show latest 3 posts from each post type (total 15 posts) using date as order by (sorting). So 3 posts from each post type will be visible and sorted based on date among all 5 post types. But I could not find any good solution for this.
What came so far in my mind is, running 5 queries and saving them to an array, and then sort them.
Is there anyway I can do this using only one query, instead of 5 queries?
2 Answers
I am not sure, if this is the most efficient option or not, but I have doen it in following way:
- I have stored 5 separate query using
get_posts
and stored them in a single array - I had to flatten the array, since it was multidimensional. Then used
usort
usingpost_date
to get the latest post - I have saved this sorted data using Transient API, to minimize database call.
Here is the code:
function delete_front_page_query_results() {
delete_transient('post_data');
$query_cpt1 = array (
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'cpt1'
);
$query_cpt2 = array (
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'cpt2'
);
$query_cpt3 = array (
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'cpt3'
);
$query_cpt4 = array (
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'cpt4'
);
$query_cpt5 = array (
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'cpt5'
);
$query_results[] = get_posts($query_cpt1);
$query_results[] = get_posts($query_cpt2);
$query_results[] = get_posts($query_cpt3);
$query_results[] = get_posts($query_cpt4);
$query_results[] = get_posts($query_cpt5);
//flattening three dimentional array to two dimensonal array
$flatten_array =array();
foreach ($query_results as $data) {
foreach($data as $flatten_data) {
$flatten_array[] = $flatten_data;
}
}
function cpt_array_sort($a, $b) {
return strtotime($b->post_date) - strtotime($a->post_date);
}
usort($flatten_array, 'cpt_array_sort');
//setting transient with the array
set_transient ( 'post_data', $flatten_array, 365*24*60*60);
}
add_action('publish_post', 'delete_front_page_query_results);