Obtaining values from objects

Question

This code works fine and returns two StdClass Objects for each of my two posts:

        $children = get_pages($args);

        foreach ($children as $cake=>$element) {
            $args = array(
                          'post_id' => $ID
                          );
            $Comments = get_comments( $args );
        };

This is great. I get each comment's properties but I am only interested in the comment date. My desired output is:

$CommentDates = (date1, date2, etc) -- Eventually I'd like to get the most recent comment date.

My next move is:

        foreach ($Comments as $CommentObject) {
            $CommentDates = $CommentObject->comment_date;
        }

This returns only one date and it happens to be the second object's value.

However, if I simply echo this foreach, I get both dates.

foreach ($Comments as $CommentObject) { echo $CommentObject->comment_date; }

Answer 1

The problem with your use of foreach (in both cases) is that you are erasing any previous value $Comments or $CommentDates had before the current iteration. Rather than setting the value to the variable itself, perhaps you should be appending new values onto the variable as an array:

// Not sure what purpose your $cake and $element serve here )
foreach( $children as $cake => $element ) {
  $args = array( 'post_id' => $ID ); // Assuming this $ID is declared elsewhere
  $comments[] = get_comments( $args );
}

foreach( $comments as $commentObject ) {
  $commentDates[] = $commentObject->comment_date;
}

Of course, these two foreach statements could be blended into one single foreach unless details not specified in your question would prevent that.

This would result in two arrays: $comments containing all of the results from each iterative call to get_comments(), and $commentsDates containing the iterative results to each $commentObject on its comment_date property.

Answer 2

$CommentDates = array();
foreach ( $Comments as $Comment ) {
    $CommentDates[] = $Comment->comment_date;
}

will save the dates into an array.

$CommentDates = '';
$length = count( $Comments );
for ( $i = 0, $i < $length, $++ ) {
    $CommentDates .= $Comment->comment_date;
    if ( ! $i == ( $length - 1 ) ) {
        $CommentDates .= ', ';
    }
}

will create a string in the format you proposed in the question.

Resources:

• php: Arrays
• php: Operators