Title: SQL SELECT statement that excludes a Category
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# SQL SELECT statement that excludes a Category

 *  [gbot](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gbot/)
 * (@gbot)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/)
 * Hi there, I’m working with this SQL query:
 * `$posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title FROM " . $wpdb->posts . "
   WHERE post_status='publish' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT " . $limit);`
 * problem is my SQL skills are not good enough for me to figure out how to modify
   this query to not return any posts that are included in category ’31’.
 * What I have done, is put a another query, within the loop I’ve made, that looks
   up that categories of each post as it loops through, and skips the loop if one
   of the categories is ’31’.
 * The problem that the out loop’s query has the LIMIT statement, to always deliver
   X number of posts. But obviously I’m always getting X posts minus how many posts
   in the query are Category 31.
 * Is there a way to do this filtering in a single SQL statement?
 * Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

 *  [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/)
 * (@whooami)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419137)
 * `SELECT `ID` , `post_title
    `FROM wp_posts` `WHERE post_status = 'publish' ` `
   AND post_category !=31 <---------` `LIMIT 0 , 30`
 * — If i understand what you want to do..that query works fine for me..
 * You cant just add the extra `and` that you must be using in the second query 
   you mentioned?
 * ## The formatting on that was f’ed up with the backticks but hopefully you got
   the point.
 *  [Medizinische Abkuerzungen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stefansuedfeld/)
 * (@stefansuedfeld)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419138)
 * SELECT ID, post_title FROM ” . $wpdb->posts . ” WHERE post_status=’publish’ and
   post_category !=’31’ ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT …
 * Have a look in your database that post_category the right field
 * Too late
 *  [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/)
 * (@whooami)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419148)
 * didnt i just say that?
 *  Thread Starter [gbot](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gbot/)
 * (@gbot)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419185)
 * Hi there, thanks for your responses.
 * That doesn’t seemt to work though – I think because the ‘post_category’ column
   in the posts table are all zeros. The category ids are stored in the post2cat
   table, and there can of course be multiple categories assigned to a given post,
   so they all need to be checked for category ’31’ (in this case).
 * I think this requires a JOIN or UNION query or something like that, which I know
   very little about unfortunately… I will investigate further, thanks again.
 *  [Medizinische Abkuerzungen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stefansuedfeld/)
 * (@stefansuedfeld)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419264)
 * [@whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/)
    Yeah, it took me five
   minutes from first view to write it down.
 * Added too late….
 *  Thread Starter [gbot](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gbot/)
 * (@gbot)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419323)
 * just reporting back, I’ve got a solution that works well for me, this SQL filters
   a variable passed into the funtion.
 *  `$posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title FROM wp_alcoveposts
   
   LEFT JOIN wp_alcovepost2cat ON (wp_alcoveposts.ID = wp_alcovepost2cat.post_id)
   WHERE post_status='publish' AND (category_id NOT IN (" . $filter . ")) ORDER 
   BY post_date DESC LIMIT " . $limit);
 * hope that might help someone else… thanks

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

The topic ‘SQL SELECT statement that excludes a Category’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

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

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 6 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [gbot](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gbot/)
 * Last activity: [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-select-statement-that-excludes-a-category/#post-419323)
 * Status: not resolved

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