Custom Post Type, pre_get_posts and dynamic validation

Hello

I am trying to dynamically exclude all invalid posts from my custom post type ‘show-case’.

To start of i have the following function to identify the invalid posts:

function ts1_showcase_invalid() {
    $showcase_invalid = array();

    $ts1_showcase_invalid = get_posts(array(
            'numberposts'   =>  -1,
            'post_type'     =>  array('show-case'),
        )
    );

    foreach($ts1_showcase_invalid as $post) {
        setup_postdata($post);
        $redirect_url = '';
        $redirect_url = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'show_case_format_meta_redirect_url', true);
        if ( !has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ) {
            array_push( $showcase_invalid , $post->ID );
        } elseif ( !empty($redirect_url) && validateURL($redirect_url) !== 'good' ) {
            array_push( $showcase_invalid , $post->ID );
        }
    }

    set_transient( 'showcase_invalid', $showcase_invalid );
    wp_reset_postdata();

    return $showcase_invalid;
}

Printing the function gives me the expected output:

Array ( [0] => 613 )

Then i have the following function that makes use of pre_get_posts to exclude the posts identified by my above function:

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'ts1_remove_showcase_invalid');
function ts1_remove_showcase_invalid( $query ) {
    if( !$query->is_admin || isset($query->query_vars['post_type']) && 'nav_menu_item' == $query->query_vars['post_type'] ) {
        //Stupid pre_get_posts and navigation in WordPress
        return;
    } elseif( !is_admin() ) {
        $query->set( 'post__not_in', ts1_showcase_invalid() );
    }
    return $query;
}

The following query is used to display the posts from my custom post type ‘show-case’:

$limit = get_option('posts_per_page');
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;

query_posts('showposts=' . $limit . '&paged=' . $paged .'&post_type=show-case');

$wp_query->is_archive = false; $wp_query->is_home = false;

However when this page is executed the query variables are as follows:

Array ( [showposts] => 10 [paged] => 1 [post_type] => show-case [error] => [m] => 0 [p] => 0 [post_parent] => [subpost] => [subpost_id] => [attachment] => [attachment_id] => 0 [name] => [static] => [pagename] => [page_id] => 0 [second] => [minute] => [hour] => [day] => 0 [monthnum] => 0 [year] => 0 [w] => 0 [category_name] => [tag] => [cat] => [tag_id] => [author_name] => [feed] => [tb] => [comments_popup] => [meta_key] => [meta_value] => [preview] => [s] => [sentence] => [fields] => [category__in] => Array ( ) [category__not_in] => Array ( ) [category__and] => Array ( ) [post__in] => Array ( ) [post__not_in] => Array ( ) [tag__in] => Array ( ) [tag__not_in] => Array ( ) [tag__and] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__in] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__and] => Array ( ) [ignore_sticky_posts] => [suppress_filters] => [cache_results] => 1 [update_post_term_cache] => 1 [update_post_meta_cache] => 1 [posts_per_page] => 10 [nopaging] => [comments_per_page] => 0 [no_found_rows] => [order] => DESC )

As you can see the ‘post__not_in’ has no value??

I am truly lost! Have tried everything i could think about to fix this but with no luck!

Please help 🙂