trying to write a variable into a wp_query, need help!

Question

I am not a php coder, I am a designer and html and css guy. However, I am stuck at the moment trying to write a piece of code that will find the name of a post, then get and display all of the posts that have that name as their category. Something like this,

Agent bio page has info about the agent and the bio post is his name and cat name. He has listings under his name which is also his category in the wp backend under categories. So under the bio info, I need to create a function that will display a list of all of his posts and display them with the thumbnail, some excerpt text and a couple of the custom fields I have created.

this will be on a agent-single.php that will be used for every agent i have so it needs to find the post name with his slug in it and find posts based on that. Is there any way to actually do this or am I hoping for something that can not be done in wp?

  $template = basename(get_permalink());  // get agent here
  $taskarr = array (
    'post_type'   => 'listing',
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'category' => $template,
    'order'       => 'ASC',
    'orderby'     => 'meta_value_num',
    'metakey'     => 'listing_date', // this is a custom field
    'metakey'     => 'location',
  );
  $tasks = get_posts($taskarr);
  foreach( $tasks as $task ) {
      //  Do stuff here, for example:
      echo '<li>';
      echo $task->post_title;
      echo $task->the_excerpt;
      echo $task->location;
          echo '</li>';
  }

this was inside my main loop which was a normal loop and of course it mutilates my code! ugh!!!

Answer 1

Using get_posts():

 <?php
      $category = get_category_by_slug($post->post_name);
      $template =  $category->term_id;
      $taskarr = array(
           'post_type' => 'listing',
           'post_status' => 'publish',
           'category' => $template,
           'order' => 'ASC',
           'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
           'meta_key' => 'listing_date'
      );
      $tasks = get_posts($taskarr);
      foreach( $tasks as $task ) {
           echo '<li>';
           echo $task->post_title;
           echo $task->post_excerpt;
           echo get_post_meta( $task->ID, 'location', 'single');
           echo '<li>';
      }
 ?>

Using WP_Query:

 <?php
       $catSlug = $post->post_name;
       $args = array(
           'post_type' => 'listing',
           'post_status' => 'publish',
           'category_name' => $catSlug,
           'order' => 'ASC',
           'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
           'meta_key' => 'listing_date'

       );
       $the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
       while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
           $the_query->the_post();
           echo '<li>';
           the_title();
           the_excerpt();
           echo get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'location', 'single');
           echo '<li>';
  }
  wp_reset_postdata();

?>