Title: Access the current loop count variable from plugin?
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Access the current loop count variable from plugin?

 *  [harknell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/harknell/)
 * (@harknell)
 * [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/access-the-current-loop-count-variable-from-plugin/)
 * I could not find this info anywhere: Does WordPress have a global variable that
   would allow plugin developers to determine where WordPress is in the current 
   loop display? So for instance if WordPress is displaying on the index and has
   10 posts to display (because the admin set this in settings) and the loop is 
   in the first post, is there a variable I can call like “$loopcount” from my plugin
   to determine when we’ve hit the third post? This would seem like a very smart
   and nice thing to have but I don’t know what it would be or can’t find info on
   it.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/access-the-current-loop-count-variable-from-plugin/#post-674722)
 * Sure.
 *     ```
       global $wp_query;
       echo $wp_query->current_post;
       ```
   
 * The first post is post zero.
 * Similarly, `$wp_query->post_count` will give you a count of how many posts there
   are.
 * When the Loop is actually running, `in_the_loop()` will return true.
 * There’s also a few action hooks. The ‘loop_start’ action gets called on the first
   call to `the_post()`, and the ‘loop_end’ action gets called on the last post-
   getting invocation of `have_posts()`. Meaning that those run just before the 
   loop starts and ends.
 *  Thread Starter [harknell](https://wordpress.org/support/users/harknell/)
 * (@harknell)
 * [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/access-the-current-loop-count-variable-from-plugin/#post-674740)
 * Thank you very much, this is great. I actually know about the loop_start and 
   loop_end parts and I use them in my plugins, but for some reason I was never 
   able to find the post_count or current_post elements you mentioned above.
 * Now one last major question:
    Does WordPress manage to keep a count of how many
   times the loop has been rewound on the same page? So if I have a page that goes
   through the loop once, then calls the rewind function to redo the loop, does 
   this get notated anywhere that can be queried? Or does the action of rewinding
   the loop have some way of being detected? I’d love to be able to place something
   at the start of the first loop on a page, then be able to say “no, don’t show
   it at the start of any subsequent loop done on this same page rendering”
 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/access-the-current-loop-count-variable-from-plugin/#post-674742)
 * Not really, no. You could hook onto loop_start and make your own global to note
   that you’ve seen one Loop, and then if you see it a second time, you could behave
   differently. But it doesn’t keep a count or have anything special happening on
   rewinding.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Access the current loop count variable from plugin?’ is closed to new
replies.

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/access-the-current-loop-count-variable-from-plugin/#post-674742)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics