Custom post type queries in Wordpress - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Custom Post Type Queries in WordPress

📖 Scenario: You are building a WordPress site for a local library. The library wants to display a list of books separately from regular blog posts. Each book is stored as a custom post type called book.Your task is to create a simple query to fetch and display these books on a page.

🎯 Goal: Build a WordPress template snippet that queries the book custom post type and displays the title of each book.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a query to get posts of the custom post type book

Set the number of posts to fetch to 5

Loop through the query results and display each book's title

Reset the post data after the loop

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Libraries, bookstores, or any site that needs to show custom content types separately from blog posts can use this technique.

💼 Career

Understanding custom post type queries is essential for WordPress developers building custom themes and plugins.

1

Create the initial query arguments

Create an array called $args with these exact entries: 'post_type' => 'book' and 'posts_per_page' => 5.

Wordpress

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an associative array with keys 'post_type' and 'posts_per_page'.

2

Create the WP_Query object

Create a variable called $book_query and assign it a new WP_Query object using the $args array.

Wordpress

$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'book',
    'posts_per_page' => 5
);
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use new WP_Query($args) to create the query object.

3

Loop through the query results and display titles

Write a while loop that runs while $book_query->have_posts() is true. Inside the loop, call $book_query->the_post() and then output the book title using the_title().

Wordpress

$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'book',
    'posts_per_page' => 5
);

$book_query = new WP_Query($args);
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use while ($book_query->have_posts()) and inside call $book_query->the_post() before the_title().

4

Reset post data after the loop

After the loop, call wp_reset_postdata() to restore the original post data.

Wordpress

$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'book',
    'posts_per_page' => 5
);

$book_query = new WP_Query($args);

while ($book_query->have_posts()) {
    $book_query->the_post();
    the_title('', '');
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Call wp_reset_postdata() after the loop to avoid conflicts with other queries.