Count custom post types with a specific meta value

Question

We have a custom type called books. In a template, we need to show the counts of books that have the book_type as

1. Fiction
2. Non Fiction
3. Novel
4. Short Stories

We use ACF Pro, and the above field is set up as a checkbox multiple selection. So a book can be Fiction + Short Stories, Fiction + Novel, etc. We need to count only Fiction.

This does not work, as found in another suggested thread here:

$query = new WP_Query( array( 'meta_key' => 'book_type', 'meta_value' => 'Fiction' ) );
$fiction = $query->found_posts;

I don't have enough points to comment there, so it's better I suppose to create a new ticket.

Also found a thread on the ACF forums, but the code suggested there doesn't work either. I use latest WP, latest ACF Pro (5.8.x).

Welcome any thoughts on how to do this.

Answer 1

1st. you need to add post_type to your query, then you need to filter meta_value with LIKE. Finaly, you need to add posts_per_page as -1 to get ALL posts.

$args = array(
    'post_type'=> 'books',
    'meta_query' => array(
                     array(
                        'key'     => 'book_type',
                        'value'   => 'Fiction',
                        'compare' => 'LIKE',
                    )
                ),
);
$query = new WP_Query($args);
$fiction = $query->found_posts;