Query from different categories showing one post per category [closed]

Question

need some help for a special custom query.

I'm trying to build a single query to retrieve some posts from different categories instead of running several loop.

Is there a clean way to do that?

I have 3 categories (catA, catB and catC)

and I retrieve one random post per each category using three queries like this one:

//
// Loop A
//
function loop_A(){ 

    // The In Production Shows Query
    $args = array(
            'posts_per_page'  => 1,
            'category_name'   => 'catA',
            'orderby'         => 'rand',
            'post_status'     => 'publish' );

    $loop_A = new WP_Query( $args );

echo '<ul>';                
    // The Loop
    while ( $loop_A->have_posts() ) : $loop_A->the_post();
        ?>
        <li>
        <a href="<?php echo the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php echo the_title_attribute(); ?>">
        <?php echo the_title(); ?>
        </a>
        </li>                   

    <?php
    endwhile;
echo '</ul>';

// Reset Post Data
wp_reset_postdata();            
    }

I probably have to add five categories in my page, so I'm trying to figure out how to avoid eight different queries running on a single page.

Hope some of you can help! I really appreciate every suggestion!

Thanks Bye Carletto

Answer 1

Haven't tested the code, but I think you could accomplish what you're trying to do with a few foreach loops:

<?php
$categories = get_categories('include=1,2,5');
foreach($categories as $category) {
$posts = get_posts('showposts=1&post_status=publish&orderby=rand&cat='. $category->term_id);

foreach($posts as $post) {
setup_postdata($post);
?>
// loop code
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php
}

}
?>