Title: Looping inside a plugin
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Looping inside a plugin

 *  [anibalrojas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anibalrojas/)
 * (@anibalrojas)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/)
 * I want to use Wp-Cron to trigger a plugin, and fectch and process some posts 
   based in certain conditions. What is the recommended way to accomplish this “
   Loop” inside such plugin?
 * I have been searching the Codex, and reading plugins source code around, but 
   it looks like everyone takes a different approach for this.
 * My point is, if I use something like the Loop inside my plugin I should be able
   to keep all other processing by other plugins, like custom Excerpts, etc. And
   I haven’t been able to set a Loop…
 * Any help woul be hilghly appreciated.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [skippy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/skippy/)
 * (@skippy)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-241907)
 * [The Loop](http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop) is a WordPress term that refers
   to WordPress’ action of displaying posts. The Loop uses
    `while ( have_posts()):
   the_post()` to iterate through each post that satisfies the `get_posts()` conditions
   from the query string or blog settings.
 * You can use [Multiple Loops](http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop#Multiple_Loops)
   to do various things. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to accomplish?
 * Give us more details about what you want, what you’ve tried, and what’s happened,
   please.
 *  Thread Starter [anibalrojas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anibalrojas/)
 * (@anibalrojas)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-241946)
 * Skippy,
 *  Thanks for your response. Actually I am trying to modify your suscribe2 plugin
   in order to send a daily digest of recent posts. I tried:
 * while ( have_posts() ) {
    the_post(); …
 * setting a post_query before, but it looks like no posts are fectched. I could
   use raw SQL to recover the past day posts, that should be easy, but I suppose
   that’s not the right way to do it. I want to rely on the WP api, and not in SQL.
 *  [skippy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/skippy/)
 * (@skippy)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-242068)
 * The WordPress API is great, but not perfect. For a lot of things, it’s sometimes
   best to go right to the database.
 * Calling `while ( have_posts())` requires you to first setup which posts you want
   to collect. You can use the [`query_posts`](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts)
   template tag to do this:
 * `<?php
    $this_month = date('m'); $yesterday = (date('d') - 1); query_posts("monthnum
   =$this_month&day=$yesterday"); ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 * Note: **completely untested**.
 *  Thread Starter [anibalrojas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anibalrojas/)
 * (@anibalrojas)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-242130)
 * The code works, thanks for your help, som attributes are fetched other don’t.
 * I went down to the source code, and I would not call the the WordPress API “great”,
   actually I am not sure there is an API at all.
 * It looks like there is no way to recover the Post information in a consistent
   and ordered way, I am not sure if the code is a real mess or it is just I am 
   not familiar enough with the PHP languaje…
 *  [skippy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/skippy/)
 * (@skippy)
 * [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-242145)
 * >  It looks like there is no way to recover the Post information in a consistent
   > and ordered way
 * What do you mean?
 * Here’s the WordPress API way to fetch a post’s data
    `<?php // fetch all the 
   data for post ID #13 $post_thirteen = get_post(13); echo $post_thirteen->post_title;?
   >
 * That’s a convenient wrapper around the direct SQL:
    `<?php $post_thirteen = $
   wpdb->get_row("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE ID=13"); echo $post_thirteen-
   >post_title; ?>
 * Using the API has the added benefit of using a post cache: if the post your requesting
   has previously been selected, it’s data will be cached and `get_post()` will 
   avoid the unnecessary hit to your database.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Looping inside a plugin’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [loop](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/loop/)
 * [query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query/)

 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [skippy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/skippy/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looping-inside-a-plugin/#post-242145)
 * Status: not resolved

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