Using stats_get_csv to return a list of popular posts by views with thumbnails

Question

I recently learned that if you have WordPress.com Stats installed, you can take advantage of stats_get_csv() (Part of the WordPress.com Stats Plugin).

<?php if ( function_exists('stats_get_csv') && $top_posts = stats_get_csv('postviews', 'days=-1&limit=4') ) : ?>
    <ol>
<?php foreach ( $top_posts as $p ) : ?>
        <li><a href="<?php echo $p['post_permalink']; ?>"><?php echo $p['post_title']; ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
    </ol>
<?php endif; ?>

That's how I have my code set up now. The problem is that it shows pages as well as posts. Also, I want to add the featured thumbnail next to each item as well as an array of custom post types. Is this possible? If so, can someone help me out?

Answer 1

The API returns the following columns when you query the postviews table:

• date
• post_id
• post_title
• post_permalink
• views

For my blog the post_id column was either empty or 0 (for the homepage). So unless you have good values there, you will have to work from the post_permalink value and determine whether it is a page or a post (via a query on the database or a regex on the URL?), and then query your database for the post thumbnail, because the WordPress.com stats API does not collect info on that.

Answer 2

The WordPress.com Stats API does not currently offer a post_type filter. You can implement one yourself in one of a number of ways. The basic idea is to loop over the post_ids to figure out which ones have a post_type of post. In your loop you can use something like this:

$post = get_post($p['post_id']);
if ( !isset($post->post_type) || $post->post_type != 'post' )
    continue;
if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) )
    $thumbnail = get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID );
else
    $thumbnail = '';

Answer 3

As to the excluding pages, if you have only a few pages, you can do it as described here:

Inside your foreach loop, before the <li> add:

 $postTitle = $single_post['post_title'];
    if($postTitle == 'Home page') {