What is the most efficient way to determine which loop I’m in?
I have a few plugins that alter the query by hooking into various parts of WP_Query::get_posts(), through the usual suspects, ie posts_where, posts_join, etc. I don’t want to effect every loop on every page though, so right now I’m running a debug_backtrace() and checking for the existence of the main() or query_posts() function as necessary.
There has to be a more efficient way to identify the primary loop and sub-loops on each page. Something I keep missing when I pore over the query vars and other aspects of the request, something that’s unique to each one. How would you go about doing this?
Just a quick update that a new method
is_main_query()has been introduced in WP 3.3.Example:
Resources:
If secondary loops are called properly (i.e. by not mucking with
query_posts(), and by setting a variable$myloopequal toget_posts()ornew WP_Query), then identifying said loop is as simple as referencing the variable.If you need to call a second loop from within the primary Loop, and you call
setup_postdata()in the secondary loop, you may need to callwp_reset_query()when you close your secondary loop, so that your template tags revert to applying to the primary Loop.