Custom post type Category Display

Question

I've been looking at this old theme. I've then created a template file called taxonomy template file and post types. When querying to show only the posts in the category selected. This is the top of my template :

    $args=array ( 

            'post_type'=> array( 'events' ),
            'tax_query' => array(  'taxonomy' => 'tax-cat' ), 
            'post_status' => array( 'future' ), 
            'pagination' => true, 
            'paged' => $paged,
            'orderby' => 'post_date',
            'order' => 'ASC', ); 
    $temp = $wp_query; 

    $wp_query = null; 
    $wp_query = new WP_Query(); 
    $wp_query->query( $args ); 

Which ive taken from the existing page template, but the above seems to show ALL Posts in the custom post type, rather than just the posts in the category.

Answer 1

The problem is not that you never specify which event cat in your query, but that you're doing a query at all.

If you want to change what the main query pulls in, change the query, don't add a second query. We do this via the pre_get_posts filter:

This hook is called after the query variable object is created, but before the actual query is run.

The pre_get_posts action gives developers access to the $query object by reference (any changes you make to $query are made directly to the original object - no return value is necessary).

For example:

function my_home_category( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_home() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'cat', '123' );
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_home_category' );

In your case, you want to use the filter:

• only if it's the main query
• only if it's an archive
• and that archive is for the events category
• to set the post status to future not publish
• and change the ordering from DESC TO ASC

Since the current requested term etc are already set, you will need a check similar to this:

function randomer11_fix_eventcat_archive( \WP_Query $q ) {
    if ( $q->is_main_query() && $q->is_archive() && $q->is_tax( 'eventcat' ) ) {
        $q->set( ... ); // set your options
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'randomer11_fix_eventcat_archive' );

You can call set as many times as you want, and now in your template, you can remove your query, and use a normal post loop. Pagination will work how its supposed to without any hacks, and your page will load a lot faster