Display custom posts, ordered by most commented, without duplicates

Question

I would like to display custom posts in template, they have to be ordered by most commented and without duplicates on the same page. This is the code that I have for now.

$args = array(
'post_type' => 'portfolio',
'status' => 'approve',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'number' => 28,
'order' => 'ASC',
'orderby' => 'comment_count',
);
$comments = get_comments($args);
if ($comments) {
    foreach ($comments as $comment) : ;
        $post_args = array(
            'post_type' => 'portfolio',
            'posts_per_page' => 1,
        );
        $posts = get_posts($post_args);
        foreach ($posts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
            $title = get_the_title($comment->comment_post_ID);
            ?>
            <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
                <h4><?php echo $title; ?></h4>
            </div>
        <?php
        endforeach;
    endforeach;
}

?>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

Answer 1

Currently, it looks like you are looping through comments and then querying the posts from there. Could you use the comment_count order by parameter directly in the posts query itself?

For example:

<?php
$post_args = array(
    'post_type' => 'portfolio',
    'posts_per_page' => 1,
    'orderby' => 'comment_count'
);
$posts = get_posts($post_args);
foreach ($posts as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
    $title = get_the_title($comment->comment_post_ID);
    ?>
    <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
        <h4><?php echo $title; ?></h4>
    </div>
<?php
endforeach;

Source: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_query/#order-orderby-parameters