List latest posts with least comments in WP-Admin

Question

I want to encourage my authors to provide feedback to new posts that have not received enough exposure. To do this, I want to add a box to WP-Admin that lists the top 3 latest posts (from the past two days) with least comments.

In terms of table structure, I'm thinking something like this answer for listing latest posts.

All you need is a table with class='widefat' and get_posts(). Then you run through the results (if there are any) and print the table rows.

The code works great but his was for listing the latest 10 posts, my question is how to list the latest posts with least comments?

Answer 1

I managed to figure it out. So, get_posts() uses WP_Query() and we can use the example in the documentation to filter the dates.

Now for the comments, that is easy, we just add the parameter 'orderby'=>'comment_count'. Also to note, when filtering get_posts(), we will need to disable suppress_filters.

Let's filter the time first:

function filter_where( $where = '' ) {
    // posts in the last 2 days
    $where .= " AND post_date > '" . date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-2 days')) . "'";
    return $where;
}

And now let's get the posts:

add_filter( 'posts_where', 'filter_where' );
    $query = get_posts(
        array (
         'numberposts' => 2,
         'orderby'=>'comment_count',
         'order'=>'ASC',
         'suppress_filters' => false,
         'post_type'   => array ( 'post' )
        )
    );
remove_filter( 'posts_where', 'filter_where' );

That will give you the top least commented posts from the past 2 days.