Counting the number of post without custom post type

Question

I made a custom post type, say ‘movie’, using "custom type post UI" plugin, and linked it with built-in category. Both normal posts and custom type posts are in the same category. My question is that if it is possible to modify the existing counting function so that it counts the number of posts that does not have a post type 'movie', i.e., only counts normal posts.

For example, one of my category, say ‘hobby’, has 5 normal posts + 3 custom ‘movie’ posts. Then, in the category widget, I want to have something like ‘hobby (5)’, not ‘hobby (8)’. In short, If it is possible, I just want to add a function (like add_filter or add_action or etc...) in functions.php to resolve this problem.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

One way to do it would be to run two custom queries like this:

$normal_post_args = array(
  'post_type' => 'post',
  'category_name' => 'hobby'
);
$normal_posts_query = new WP_Query( $normal_post_args );

$movie_post_args = array(
  'post_type' => 'movie',
  'category_name' => 'hobby'
);
$movie_posts_query = new WP_Query( $movie_post_args );


echo "Posts (" . $normal_posts_query->found_posts . ")";
echo "Movies (" . $movie_posts_query->found_posts . ")";

This should give you something like Posts (5) and Movies (3). That's a starting place. Then it's just a matter of wrapping this in a function and referencing it in your template file.

---

Update: Based on your comments, the best way I can think of to do this would be to create your own category list, rather than using the default WP one.

Something like this:

$categories = get_terms( 'category');
if($categories):
  echo "<ul>";

  foreach($categories as $cat):

    $cat_posts = get_posts('post_type=movie&category=' . $cat->term_id . '&numberposts=-1'); 
    if($cat_posts):
      echo "<li>" . $cat->name;
      $count = count($cat_posts); 
      echo " ($count)"; 
      echo "</li>";
    endif;

  endforeach;

  echo "</ul>";
endif;

Answer 2

The answer by @dkeeling is valid, and working. However, if you are using WP_Query() you should also use wp_reset_postdata() afterward to reset the query and prevent messing with the other queries.

If you wish, you can use get_posts() instead, which returns the posts as an array that you can count using the native PHP count() function:

 // Get an array of posts
 $posts = get_posts ( 'numberposts=-1&post_type=movie&category_name=hobby' );

 // Count the posts
 $numbers = count ( $posts );

This way, you don't need an additional wp_reset_postdata().

Make sure you also set a numberposts or posts_per_page to retrieve all posts. Otherwise, the number of posts retrieved are limited to the default 5, or the number that you set in the Reading section of general options.