How do I get pagination to work for get_posts() in WordPress?

Question

I'm working on a WordPress site and I've created a page template that displays posts by a category slug. To do this, I create a field for the page, WP_Catid, and set it equal to the category slug I want to display posts from. However, I only want five posts to show up per page with pagination links at the bottom of those posts. How do I get the pagination links to display properly?

My code is as follows:

<div id="container">   <div id="content" role="main">     <?php       $btpgid=get_queried_object_id();       $btmetanm=get_post_meta( $btpgid, 'WP_Catid','true' );       $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;        $args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 5,                      'category_name' => $btmetanm,                      'paged' => $paged,                      'post_type' => 'post' );        $myposts = get_posts( $args );       foreach ( $myposts as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post );          echo "<div style='border:2px groove black; margin-bottom:5px;'><h3 class='btposth'>";         the_title();          echo "</h3><div class='btpostdiv'>";         the_content();         echo "</div></div>";       endforeach;        next_posts_link( 'Older Entries'); //not displaying       previous_posts_link('Newer Entries &raquo;'); //not displaying       wp_reset_postdata();     ?>   </div><!-- #content --> </div><!-- #container --> 

Answer 1

The sweet and short of this, don't use get_posts if you need paginated queries. get_posts works perfectly if you are going to use a custom query that doesn't need pagination, but it really becomes a big complicated mess when you need to introduce pagination.

I think the easiest and most appropriate here is to make use of WP_Query to construct your custom query, that is, if you can't use pre_get_posts to alter the main query to get your desired output from the main query.

I do think that next_posts_link() and previous_posts_link() is better to use with a custom query, ie with WP_Query. You must just remember however to set the $max_pages parameter when you make use of a custom query, otherwise your pagination will break

With a few minor tweaks, your query should look like this

<div id="container"> <div id="content" role="main"> <?php $btpgid=get_queried_object_id(); $btmetanm=get_post_meta( $btpgid, 'WP_Catid','true' ); $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;  $args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 5, 'category_name' => $btmetanm, 'paged' => $paged,'post_type' => 'post' );     $postslist = new WP_Query( $args );      if ( $postslist->have_posts() ) :         while ( $postslist->have_posts() ) : $postslist->the_post();                 echo "<div style='border:2px groove black; margin-bottom:5px;'><h3 class='btposth'>";                  the_title();               echo "</h3><div class='btpostdiv'>";                  the_content();              echo "</div></div>";           endwhile;                 next_posts_link( 'Older Entries', $postslist->max_num_pages );              previous_posts_link( 'Next Entries &raquo;' );          wp_reset_postdata();     endif;     ?>  </div><!-- #content --> </div><!-- #container --> 

Answer 2

Pieter Goosen's answer is completely correct, and his suggestion to use WP_Query instead makes the most sense. However, I stumbled across this question whilst looking for pagination with get_posts outside of the loop, so I thought this might also be a useful alternative for anyone else:

get_posts has a direct property called offset which achieves pretty much the same thing as paged in WP_Query; but where paged refers to pagination (e.g. 1, 2, 3), offset is the actual number of posts you want to offset your query by (e.g. 5, 10, 15). With a little maths - numberToShow * pageNumber - you can get the correct offset easily:

$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 0;  $postsPerPage = 5; $postOffset = $paged * $postsPerPage;  $args = array(     'posts_per_page'  => $postsPerPage,     'category_name'   => $btmetanm,     'offset'          => $postOffset,     'post_type'       => 'post' );  $myposts = get_posts($args); 

The initial paged value in this example is 0 rather than 1 because, when multiplying the posts_per_page, you want the initial offset to be 0 rather than 5.

This can be most handy if you want a little more granular control rather than straightforward pagination, but should work just as well in combination with the loop in the accepted answer.