Title: Multiple Queries Compiling into one Loop
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Multiple Queries Compiling into one Loop

 *  Resolved [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/)
 * Hello,
    I’m trying to do something interesting but Google is not providing any
   answers. I thought maybe someone has done this before or perhaps could figure
   it out.
 * I want to run multiple queries and compile them all into one loop. The reason
   is, I have tags that live in multiple custom taxonomies but are occasionally 
   the same. I want my custom archive.php page to retrieve posts for all post types
   for the queried taxonomy term, no matter the taxonomies that it lives in.
 * For instance, on our blog/database of authors’ homes, we have a News posts tagged“
   Edgar Allan Poe” and we have House Posts with the “author taxonomy” term “Edgar
   Allan Poe” for the Author sorting feature. In a couple places, I would like all
   posts with the term “Edgar Allan Poe” to be returned regardless of the taxonomy
   that holds it.
 * I can envision a something like
 *     ```
       <?php
       $posts = get_posts( array(
       		'tag' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $posts .= get_posts( array(
       		'bookauthor' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       foreach($posts as $post) :
       		setup_postdata($post);
       ?>
       ```
   
 * but that is an invalid argument for `foreach`
 * Any idea how one would compile the results of multiple queries, disregard duplicates,
   and return the results in a loop?
 * Thanks!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

 *  Thread Starter [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892673)
 * any ideas?
 *  [Curtiss Grymala](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cgrymala/)
 * (@cgrymala)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892674)
 * The get_posts() function returns an array. Using `.=` in PHP appends one string
   to the end of another. The correct way to do this would be more like:
 *     ```
       <?php
       $posts = get_posts( array( //first group of stuff ) );
       $moreposts = get_posts( array( //second group of stuff ) );
       $posts = array_merge( $posts, $moreposts );
       foreach( $posts as $post ) :
           setup_postdata( $post );
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892676)
 * ohh right, I should have known…does array_merge disregard duplicates?
 * Thanks!
 *  [Curtiss Grymala](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cgrymala/)
 * (@cgrymala)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892678)
 * If the array items returned by `get_posts()` are numerically indexed (which I
   believe they are), duplicates will be included after you perform the `array_merge()`.
   The `array_merge()` function only overwrites items if they share the same non-
   numeric key.
 * To get rid of duplicates, you could try using `array_unique()`.
 *  Thread Starter [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892721)
 * this is proving very difficult.
 * This is probably very inefficient but I have gotten pretty far with my limited
   php knowledge. my problem is that my $uniqueposts array is in an associative 
   array which, it seems, the post__in query parameter will not accept. Here is 
   my code, any help would be very much appreciated.
 *     ```
       <?php
       $blogposts = get_posts(array(
       		'tag' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $authorposts = get_posts(array(
       		'bookauthor' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $mergedposts = array_merge( $blogposts, $authorposts );
   
       $postids = array();
       foreach( $mergedposts as $item ) {
       $postids[]=$item->ID;
       }
       $uniqueposts = array_unique($postids);
       print_r($uniqueposts);
       $posts = get_posts(array(
       		'post__in' => $uniqueposts,
        		));
        		foreach( $posts as $singlepost ) :
           setup_postdata( $post );?>
       ```
   
 *  [Curtiss Grymala](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cgrymala/)
 * (@cgrymala)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892722)
 * I don’t understand why you’re trying to retrieve the posts twice. Why not just
   do something like the following (not tested, but I think it should work).
 *     ```
       <?php
       $blogposts = get_posts(array(
       		'tag' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $authorposts = get_posts(array(
       		'bookauthor' => $tagslug,
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $mergedposts = array_unique( array_merge( $blogposts, $authorposts ) );
       foreach( $mergedposts as $singlepost ) :
           setup_postdata( $post );?>
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892723)
 * I am trying to do this because you can only query one taxonomy at a time. I have
   a client that sometimes uses one and sometimes uses another, not ideal I know.
   So I want to return posts that have a given take no matter which taxonomy it 
   is in.
 * I had tried your solution but it returned a post with the id 0 that had no content.
 * The way I was doing it was to retrieve an array of the unique post IDs and the
   I tried to query only posts with those IDs. Something went wrong but I am not
   sure what, it should have worked. Instead, two random posts got returned. I think
   two queries on the page (one in the sidebar) are conflicting.
 *  Thread Starter [Taylor Baybutt](https://wordpress.org/support/users/taxbax/)
 * (@taxbax)
 * [15 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892724)
 * ahh, I’m dumb. I got got to put a post_type parameter in my post__in query. My
   final code is this:
 *     ```
       <?php
       $term = get_term_by( 'slug', get_query_var( 'tag' ), "post_tag" );
       $tagslug = $term->slug;
       $post_types = get_post_types('','names');
       ?>
       <?php
       //first query
       $blogposts = get_posts(array(
       		'tag' => $tagslug, //first taxonomy
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       //second query
       $authorposts = get_posts(array(
       		'bookauthor' => $tagslug, //second taxonomy
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       $mergedposts = array_merge( $blogposts, $authorposts ); //combine queries
   
       $postids = array();
       foreach( $mergedposts as $item ) {
       $postids[]=$item->ID; //create a new query only of the post ids
       }
       $uniqueposts = array_unique($postids); //remove duplicate post ids
   
       $posts = get_posts(array(
       		'post__in' => $uniqueposts, //new query of only the unique post ids on the merged queries from above
       		'post_type' => $post_types,
       		'post_status' => 'publish',
        		));
       foreach( $posts as $post ) :
       setup_postdata($post);
       ?>
       ```
   
 * hope this helps someone else! If anyone can think of a more efficient way to 
   do it, please share!
 *  [Andres Richero](https://wordpress.org/support/users/arichero/)
 * (@arichero)
 * [14 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892856)
 * Thanks a lot for sharing, you code was a great clue to solving some other problems
   which needed merging queries.
    Great work.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

The topic ‘Multiple Queries Compiling into one Loop’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [array](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/array/)
 * [compile](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/compile/)
 * [Merge](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/merge/)
 * [multiple-taxonomies](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/multiple-taxonomies/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 9 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Andres Richero](https://wordpress.org/support/users/arichero/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multiple-queries-compiling-into-one-loop/#post-1892856)
 * Status: resolved

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