WP_Query() not working as expected

Question

I'm building a plugin for EDD which adds a custom metabox with checkbox option meta_key _xy_global_product.

So far, so good.

In the frontend, I'm trying to filter posts which have this meta_key set to 1.

This is my code:

        $args = [
            'meta_query' => [
                [
                    'key'   => '_xy_global_product',
                    'value' => 1
                ]
            ],
            'post_type' => 'download', // Custom post type, created by Easy Digital Downloads.
            'posts_per_page' => -1
        ];
        $global_products = new WP_Query($args);

$global_products returns an empty array, because the query built by WP_Query() is the following:

SELECT   wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts  INNER JOIN wp_postmeta ON ( wp_posts.ID = wp_postmeta.post_id ) WHERE 1=1  AND wp_posts.ID NOT IN (4816,4473,4163) AND ( 
  ( wp_postmeta.meta_key = '_xy_global_product' AND wp_postmeta.meta_value = '1' )
) AND wp_posts.post_type = 'download' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'cancelled' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'edd_subscription' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'refunded' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'failed' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'revoked' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'abandoned' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'processing' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'active' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'inactive' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'preapproval_pending' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'preapproval' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'private') GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC

The expected result (in my test case) would be a post with ID 4163. However, on production it could be a list of posts.

The following part is preventing the query from being successful: wp_posts.ID NOT IN (4816,4473,4163) because when I remove that, it returns the expected result.

How do I get rid of this part in the query?

Answer 1

Ah, nevermind. Found it.

I'm using another plugin (EDD Hide Download) which hides certain downloads and does that by hooking into the pre_get_posts action, which is triggered in WP_Query. The download in question was marked as hidden, that's why WP_Query didn't return it.

To resolve this, I did the following.

I added an action which was triggered after EDD Hide Downloads:

add_action('plugins_loaded', [$this, 'unhide_downloads'], 11); // EDD Hide Downloads triggers at the default priority 10.

And removed the action hook responsible for inserting the wp_posts.ID NOT IN query:

public function unhide_downloads()
{
    if (function_exists('edd_hide_download')) {
        remove_action('pre_get_posts', [edd_hide_download(), 'pre_get_posts'], 9999);
    }
}