Question

I have a query that returns all posts from a DB table that match the given criteia, but I’m looking for a way to only return up to 5 posts from each 'post_type'. Currently the query is selecting every single post that matches and I am having to limit the numbers from each 'post_type' in PHP, which is not particularly efficient.

Can this be done? Thanks.

SELECT ID, post_title, post_type
FROM wp_posts
WHERE 1=1
AND post_status = "publish"
AND (
    post_type IN (
        "staff"
    )
    AND post_name LIKE "%The%"
)
OR (
    post_type NOT IN (
        "staff",
        "Attachment"
    )
    AND (
        post_name LIKE "%The%"
        OR post_title LIKE "%The%"
    )
)
ORDER BY post_type, post_name ASC

Answer 1

This solution will select the five most recent (based on id) posts per post_type:

SELECT     a.id, a.post_title, a.post_type
FROM       wp_posts a
INNER JOIN wp_posts b ON a.post_type = b.post_type AND a.id <= b.id
WHERE      a.post_status = 'publish' AND
           (a.post_type = 'staff' AND a.post_name LIKE '%The%') OR
           (a.post_type NOT IN ('staff', 'Attachment') AND (a.post_name LIKE '%The%' OR a.post_title LIKE '%The%'))
GROUP BY   a.id, a.post_title, a.post_type
ORDER BY   a.post_type, a.post_name
HAVING     COUNT(1) <= 5