Get ONLY the count from wp_query without fetching posts

Question

This is potentially a duplicate but what was listed on the following link didn't work for me : Return only Count from a wp_query request?

I can't get the count using the query below. If I set posts_per_page = -1 it renders a blank page, if I set it to something like 10, it returns 10 found_posts..

There's 190k results with "special_key", so maybe something to do with it..?

// There are 190k records with post_meta "special_key" on each coupon/post.
$query = array(
    'post_type' => 'shop_coupon',
    'meta_key' => 'special_key',  
    'fields' => 'ids',
    'no_found_rows' => true,    
);

$results = new WP_Query($query);
echo $results->found_posts; //// This is 0...
echo $results->count_posts; //// This is 0...
wp_reset_postdata();

If it helps, I'm running the query from inside a plugin.

Answer 1

The found_posts property of the WP_Query class is what you're looking for, which is the amount of found posts for the current query. However, you got a 0 because you set no_found_rows (in the $query array) to true, which means the amount there will not be calculated. I.e.

• WordPress will not append SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS to the SQL command for querying the posts. Otherwise, the command would be something like: SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS {the rest of the query}

• WordPress will not execute SELECT FOUND_ROWS() after the posts query is complete. And when it's not executed, the value of the found_posts property would be a zero (0).

So remove the no_found_rows from the $query array, and the $results->found_posts would have the proper value:

$query = array(
    'post_type' => 'shop_coupon',
    'meta_key' => 'special_key',
    'fields' => 'ids',
);