show posts from one category with comments only

Question

Would anybody have a good idea for getting the WP to spit out all posts from a category with (approved) comments only?

I have an ecommerce site set up, and treat comments on product posts as testimonials.

Now I want a page that shows all those 'testimonials' (comments) next to the product (post) title and thumbnail.

Can anyone help?? Ive tried a number of things, but obviously dont understand the workings of the loop well enough to filter on these criteria....

Cheers! peter

Answer 1

To retrieve all posts from a category, while preserving the original Loop query, you create a new query like so:

<?php 

$testimonials = new WP_Query( 
    array( 
        'post_status' => 'publish', 
        'post_type' => 'post', 
        'posts_per_page' => 30,     // limit number of posts for which to get ALL the comments of
        'category__in' => array( 2, 6, 18 ) // specify the categories you want the posts of
    ) 
);

?>

The variable $testimonials now contains all posts from the categories specified. You can place this inside the current main loop. In single.php, that would look something like this:

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); // this is the main loop, used in single.php will only contain a single post ?>

<article id="post-<?php $post->ID; ?>">

    <h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
    <?php the_content(); // this gets the posts' own content ?>

    <?php $testimonials = new WP_Query( 
        array( 
            'post_status' => 'publish', 
            'post_type' => 'post', 
            'posts_per_page' => 30,     // limit number of posts for which to get ALL the comments of
            'category__in' => array( 2, 6, 18 ) // specify the categories you want the posts of
        ) 
    );
    if ( $testimonial->have_posts() ) : while ( $testimonial->have_posts() ) : $testimonial->the_post(); 

        // please note that $testimonial->the_post() has overwritten the original $post,
        // but since we're on single.php and the main post content was already fetched that's probably alright
        $comments = get_comments( array(
            'status' => 'approve',
            'post_id' => $post->ID, 
            'number' => '5', // if you want to limit the number of comments on that particular post ID
        ));

        foreach( $comments as $comment ) :
            echo( $comment->comment_author . '<br />' . $comment->comment_content );
        endforeach;

    endwhile; // this quits the $testimonials loop, not the main loop
    endif; // end of $testimonials->have_posts()
    ?>

</article>

<?php
endwhile; // this quits the main loop
endif; // end of have_posts()
?>

Answer 2

There's the WP_Comment_Query for this task. Then we got get_all_category_ids().

So first we'd query all the products custom post type posts (or whatever it's called).

$products = new WP_Query( array(
     'cat'                    => get_all_category_ids()
    ,'posts_per_page'         => -1
    ,'posts_per_archive_page' => -1
    ,'post_type'              => 'products'
) );

This will allow us to do a simple loop:

if ( $products->have_posts() )
{
    while( $products->have_posts() )
    {
        the_post();
        // display thumbnail, product title, description, comments here
    }
}

Then, before the loop, we'd fetch all comments and order them by ID:

$testimonials = new WP_Comment_Query( array(
     'status'   => 'approve'
    ,'orderby'  => 'comment_post_ID'
    ,'number'   => ''
) );

This will help us doing this query only once, so we save processing time.

Then, inside the loop, while displaying a single product, we'd fetch our comments/testimonials for this product, using wp_list_pluck() by the comment_post_ID "field":

$testimonials_for_product = wp_list_pluck( $testimonials, 'comment_post_ID' );

The final step would just be looping through them:

foreach ( $testimonials_for_product as $tfp )
    var_dump( $tfp );

This code isn't tested, so it probably needs some testing and fine tuning.