Title: WP_Query not always returning posts
Last modified: January 24, 2019

---

# WP_Query not always returning posts

 *  [breggen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/breggen/)
 * (@breggen)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/)
 * Hello All,
    I have had the following problem to deal with : I created a cronjob
   to update the stock value of the products in our webshop. We get these values
   from our warehouse partner. So i created the following function to update the
   stock :
 * function cron_yp_update_product_stock_b1f6051b() {
    $oConvexStock = YP_get_stock_per_SKU();
 *  $oQuery = new WC_Product_Query( array( “return” => “objects”, “virtual” => false));
 *  $oResult = $oQuery->get_products();
    if ( is_array( $oResult ) ) { foreach( 
   $oResult as $oProduct ) { if ( isset( $oConvexStock[$oProduct->get_sku()] ) ){
   wc_update_product_stock($oProduct, $oConvexStock[$oProduct->get_sku()], “set”);}}}}
 * This gets an array with stock amounts keyed by the SKU of the product. When I
   run this cronjob from within the admin panel everything runs fine. When I let
   it run from within the cronjob itself, nothing happens when calling get_products().
   The script simply ends at once without any error.
 * I have been digging into this problem today and found it to come from WP_Query-
   >query(). Looking at this function, this is the code :
 *  public function query( $query ) {
    $this->init(); $this->query = $this->query_vars
   = wp_parse_args( $query ); return $this->get_posts(); }
 * The scripts stop running after :
 *  $this->query = $this->query_vars = wp_parse_args( $query );
 * When i split this function it happends at the moment $this->query is overwritten.
   As it seems PHP (I have version 7.2.11) can’t figure out if it needs to override
   the variable $query or the function query as the variable gets unset while initialising
   the function and wp_parse_args returns a pointer when you pass an array to it.
 * This naming scheme is not really handy when using a weak-typed language like 
   PHP. Although I have no idea why PHP gets it wrong while running the cron and
   gets it right when triggering from the admin panel.
 * I renamed the variable $query to something else and changed all the occurences
   the script didn’t crash at the given line so the naming is really the problem.
   But I can’t simply rename since other parts of the WordPress code are dependent
   on this public variable of the class and all scripts call the ->query() function.
 * So I am a bit lost on how to fix this problem, but it stops my website from receiving
   the latest stock updated from out warehouse.
 * Please could some of the developers shed a light on this problem and how to fix
   it??
 * With kind regards,
    Michel van der Breggen

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

 *  [Joy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/joyously/)
 * (@joyously)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11127868)
 * Do you mean an actual cronjob, or a WordPress cron? (How is WordPress being loaded
   for this?)
 *  Thread Starter [breggen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/breggen/)
 * (@breggen)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11128266)
 * I mean a WordPress Cron. It gets loaded when a page loads. Or I can trigger it
   through the use of the Advanced Cron Manager plugin.
 *  [JNashHawkins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jnashhawkins/)
 * (@jnashhawkins)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11128735)
 * How about triggering an actual crontask from the Control Panels Cron?
 *  Thread Starter [breggen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/breggen/)
 * (@breggen)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11129778)
 * Well the mystery deepens it seems. I spent yesterday evening further debugging
   this issue and some strange things happen, which lead me to believe that there
   might be something going on in PHP. Apart from the problem described above I 
   also found the following ( i will show only a small snippet of WP_Query class)
 *     ```
       	public function query( $query ) {
       		$this->init();
       		$this->query = $this->query_vars = wp_parse_args( $query );
       		return $this->get_posts();
       	}
       ```
   
 * As you can see it will call $this->get_posts() and return whatever it gives back.
   At the end of the get_posts function the return looks like this
 * `return $this->posts;`
 * So in this function it will manipulate the $this->posts class variable and return
   it to the caller. While this all looks nice, the following actually happens:
   
   The function return nothing ( or null have not checked that ) but the $this->
   posts actually contains the manipulated posts. This is just as strange as the
   first problem I found.
 * Stranger still is that when calling the function from the admin panel all works
   as expected. I will need to check how WP calls its cronjob. Maybe this is done
   by externally calling PHP with the wp_cron.php as script?? I have no clue at 
   this moment. I will also try and upgrade PHP to the latest version, maybe this
   is a known bug or so.
 * To be continued
 *  Thread Starter [breggen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/breggen/)
 * (@breggen)
 * [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11129868)
 * Ok, so I changed the query function to look like :
 *     ```
       	public function query( $query ) {
       		$this->init();
       		$this->query = $this->query_vars = wp_parse_args( $query );
       		$this->get_posts();
       		return $this->posts; 
       	}
       ```
   
 * That fixed the problem and now both calls return products. Only one problem now
   is that the call from the admin panel returns 4 products and the cronjob call
   returns 2 products. The difference is that the admin panel call also returns 
   products that are member only and the cronjob call doesn’t include the member
   only products.
 * But this is a whole other problem, possibly to do with the query variables I 
   can pass to the query.
 * One down, the rest to go.

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

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## Tags

 * [php](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/php/)
 * [wp_cron](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp_cron/)
 * [wp_query](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp_query/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [breggen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/breggen/)
 * Last activity: [7 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp_query-not-always-returning-posts/#post-11129868)
 * Status: not resolved

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