get_comments() │ WP 2.7.0

Retrieve a list of comments.

The comment list can be for the blog as a whole or for an individual post.

Uses: WP_Comment_Query()

No Hooks.

Return

WP_Comment[]|Int[]|Int. List of comments or number of found comments if $count argument is true.

Usage

get_comments( $args );
$args(string|array)
Array or string of arguments. See WP_Comment_Query::__construct() for information on accepted arguments.
Default: empty string

Examples

3

#1 Outputs all comments on post 15 (including spam and unapproved) 

$comments = get_comments( 'post_id=15' );

foreach( $comments as $comment ){

	echo( $comment->comment_author );
}
0

#2 Show 5 unapproved comments. 

$comments = get_comments( [
	'status'  => 'hold',
	'number'  => '5',
	'post_id' => 1, // correctly post_id, not post_ID
] );

foreach( $comments as $comment ){
	echo $comment->comment_author . '<br />' . $comment->comment_content;
}
0

#3 Display the number of comments on the post 

$comments = get_comments( [
	'post_id' => 1, // use post_id, not post_ID
	'count' => true // returns only count
] );

echo $comments;
0

#4 Display the number of the user comments 

$args = array(
	'user_id' => 1,
	'count'   => true
);

$comments = get_comments( $args );

echo $comments;
0

#5 Display the user's comments. 

$args = array(
	'user_id' => 1, // user ID
);

$comments = get_comments( $args );

foreach( $comments as $comment ){
	echo $comment->comment_author . '<br />' . $comment->comment_content;
}
0

#6 Delete, in a row, identical comments.

Comparing the author and the content of the comment.

// get all comments with empty argument number
$all_comments = get_comments( [
	'status' => 'approve',
	'number' => '', 
] );

// array that will contain the IDs of duplicate comments
$comment_ids_to_delete = [];

foreach( $all_comments as $k => $c ){

	$kk = $k-1; // Previous comment index in the $all_comments array
	$pc = $all_comments[ $kk ]; // previous comment object

	// If the author and content are the same, add the comment to the array for deletion
	if( 
		$pc->comment_author === $c->comment_author 
		&& 
		$pc->comment_content === $c->comment_content 
	){
		$comment_ids_to_delete[] = $pc->comment_ID;
	}
}

// Delete comments by ID
foreach( $comment_ids_to_delete as $comm_id ){
	wp_delete_comment( $comm_id );
}
0

#7 Get the latest comments in a list style.

This code gets the last 10 comments as a UL list. Where the comment text is shortened to 50 characters and is a link to the comment itself:

$args = array(
	'number'  => 10,
	'orderby' => 'comment_date',
	'order'   => 'DESC',
	'type' => '', // only comments, no pings, etc...
);

if( $comments = get_comments( $args ) ){

	echo '<ul>';

	foreach( $comments as $comment ){
		$comm_link = get_comment_link( $comment->comment_ID ); // can be a heavy request ...
		$comm_short_txt = mb_substr( strip_tags( $comment->comment_content ), 0, 50 ) .'...';

		echo '<li>'. $comment->comment_author .': <a rel="nofollow" href="'. $comm_link .'">'. $comm_short_txt .'</a></li>';
	}

	echo '</ul>';
}

/*
Data in $comment object
stdClass Object
	[comment_ID]            => 9727
	[comment_post_ID]       => 477
	[comment_author]        => Andrew
	[comment_author_email]  => [email protected]
	[comment_author_url]    =>
	[comment_author_IP]     => 178.45.177.200
	[comment_date]          => 2015-22-01 00:27:04
	[comment_date_gmt]      => 2015-22-28 21:27:04
	[comment_content]       => comment text
	[comment_karma]         => 0
	[comment_approved]      => 1
	[comment_agent]         => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:36.0)
	[comment_type]          =>
	[comment_parent]        => 9724
	[user_id]               => 313

*/
0

#8 An example of getting child comments as a tree

An example of how the parameter 'hierarchical' => 'threaded' works:

$comments = get_comments( [
	'parent'       => 22384,
	'hierarchical' => 'threaded',
] );

/* Result (some fields of WP_Comment object are removed for clarity):
Array
	[22986] => WP_Comment Object
		[comment_ID]           => 22986
		[comment_post_ID]      => 8342
		[comment_author]       => camp
		[comment_date]         => 2018-04-11 19:07:08
		[comment_content]      => Added.
		[comment_type]         =>
		[comment_parent]       => 22430
		[populated_children:protected] => 1
		[children:protected] => Array
			[22998] => WP_Comment Object
				[comment_ID]           => 22998
				[comment_post_ID]      => 8342
				[comment_author]       => Maxim
				[comment_date]         => 2018-04-12 12:15:25
				[comment_content]      => Works great. Thank you!
				[comment_type]         =>
				[comment_parent]       => 22986
				[populated_children:protected] => 1
				[children:protected] => Array
					[23035] => WP_Comment Object
						[comment_ID]                   => 23035
						[comment_post_ID]              => 8342
						[comment_author]               => camp
						[comment_date]                 => 2018-04-16 15:36:00
						[comment_content]              => Thanks for the feedback!
						[comment_type]                 =>
						[comment_parent]               => 22998
						[children:protected]           =>
						[populated_children:protected] => 1

	[22982] => WP_Comment Object
			[comment_ID]            => 22982
			[comment_post_ID]       => 8342
			[comment_author]        => Maxim
			[comment_date]          => 2018-04-11 12:12:00
			[comment_content]       => > Great, if we could also write the output of the total rating.
			[comment_type]          =>
			[comment_parent]        => 22430
			[populated_children:protected] => 1
			[children:protected]    => Array
				[22985] => WP_Comment Object
					[comment_ID]            => 22985
					[comment_post_ID]       => 8342
					[comment_author]        => camp
					[comment_date]          => 2018-04-11 19:05:57
					[comment_content]       => Hello. Judging by the question, you don't need advice, you need to make a ready-made one.
					[comment_type]          =>
					[comment_parent]        => 22982
					[children:protected]    =>
					[populated_children:protected] => 1
*/
0

#9 Get comments via WP_Comment_Query class

This kind of query can be useful when we need to access the properties of the object WP_Comment_Query.

For example, in the properties we can see the query that is obtained with the specified query parameters.

$args = [
	'meta_query'   => [
		[
			'key'     => 'condition',
			'value'   => 'to_delete'
		]
	],
	'date_query' => [
		[ 'before' => '5 month ago' ]
	],
	'orderby' => [ 'comment_ID' => 'DESC' ],
	'number'  => 100
];
$query = new WP_Comment_Query;
$comments = $query->query( $args );

// output the query
echo $query->request;

/*
SELECT  wp_comments.comment_ID FROM wp_comments
	INNER JOIN wp_commentmeta ON ( wp_comments.comment_ID = wp_commentmeta.comment_id )
	WHERE ( ( comment_approved = '0' OR comment_approved = '1' ) )
	AND (
		( wp_commentmeta.meta_key = 'condition' AND wp_commentmeta.meta_value = 'to_delete' )
	)
	AND (
		wp_comments.comment_date < '2020-02-26 11:48:03'
	)
	GROUP BY wp_comments.comment_ID
	ORDER BY wp_comments.comment_ID DESC
	LIMIT 0,100
*/
0

#10 Creating comment pagination

The code below shows how to display user comments with pagination links in WordPress. To do this, we need to use the WP_Comment_Query class.

Suppose we display comments on page /user-comments and we will use GET parameter ?pagenum=10 to add pagination page number. We are going to output 50 comments per page. We are going to use function paginate_links() to create HTML code for pagination links.

$per_page = 50;
$pagenum = $_GET['pagenum'] ?? 1;
$offset = ($pagenum - 1) * $per_page;
$paged_url_patt = home_url( preg_replace( '/[?&].*/', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ) ) .'?pagenum=%#%';

$query    = new WP_Comment_Query;
$comments = $query->query( [
	'order'   => 'DESC',
	'user_id' => $user_id,
	'offset'  => $offset,
	'number'  => $per_page,
	'no_found_rows'  => false,
] );

//$total_comments = (int) $query->found_comments;
$max_pages      = (int) $query->max_num_pages;

$paginate_links = paginate_links( [
	'base'    => $paged_url_patt,
	'current' => $pagenum,
	'total'   => $max_pages
] );

echo $paginate_links;

The result will be the following HTML code:

<a class="prev page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=2">← Prev</a>
<a class="page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=1">1</a>
<a class="page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=2">2</a>
<span aria-current="page" class="page-numbers current">3</span>
<a class="page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=4">4</a>
<a class="page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=5">5</a>
<span class="page-numbers dots">…</span>
<a class="page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=75">75</a>
<a class="next page-numbers" href="https://example.com/profile/comments?pagenum=4">Next →</a>

0

#11 Get comments from last 4 weeks 

$args = array(
	'date_query' => array(
		'after' => '4 weeks ago',
		'before' => 'tomorrow',
		'inclusive' => true,
	),
);

$comments = get_comments( $args );

foreach ( $comments as $comment ) {
	// Output comments etc here
}
0

#12 Get all comments of two post types: 

$paged = get_query_var( 'page' ) ?: 1;

$args = array(
	'number'    => 5,
	'post_type' => array( 'property', 'page' ),
	'paged' => $paged,
	'parent' => 0,
);

$comments = get_comments( $args );
0

#13 Get child comment of parent comment 

$args = array(
	'parent'       => $comment->comment_ID, //Comment ID '64'
	'hierarchical' => true,
	'status'       => 'approve',
);

$child_comments = get_comments( $args );

or you can use get_children()

$comment->get_children()

Changelog

Since 2.7.0 Introduced.

get_comments() code WP 6.7.1

wp-includes/comment.php 
function get_comments( $args = '' ) {
	$query = new WP_Comment_Query();
	return $query->query( $args );
}

Comments