Making custom WooCommerce loop

Question

I'm using already designed theme for wordpress, and now instead of regular blog posts I would like to display WooCommerce products (which are custom post types I persume).

This is the current query with display loop:

<?php 
                $args = array(
                    //'posts_per_page' => '2',
                    'paged' => get_query_var('paged')
                );
                $homepage_query = new WP_Query($args);
            ?>
            <?php //query_posts('posts_per_page=4&paged='.get_query_var('paged')); ?>
            <?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>  
                <?php while ( $homepage_query->have_posts() ) : $homepage_query->the_post(); ?>
                    <?php if($style == 'blog_style') { ?>
                    <div id="blog-style" class="post-box">
                        <?php get_template_part('content', 'blog'); ?>
                    </div>
                    <?php } else { ?>
                    <div class="post-box grid_4 <?php aero_post_box_class(); ?>">
                        <?php get_template_part('content', ''); ?>
                    </div>
                    <?php } ?>
                <?php endwhile; ?>

Is there a way to add options to $args so the loop displays WooCommerce products? I'm also using pagination with this loop, which is required on this project, so that's why it's important to use this loop.

Answer 1

You should be able to access products through the loop, setting the post_type arg to product:

<?php

// Setup your custom query
$args = array( 'post_type' => 'product', ... );
$loop = new WP_Query( $args );

while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>

    <a href="<?php echo get_permalink( $loop->post->ID ) ?>">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>

<?php endwhile; wp_reset_query(); // Remember to reset ?>

Answer 2

This is the proper way to re-create and customize the WooCommerce product loop:

  if(!function_exists('wc_get_products')) {
    return;
  }

  $paged                   = (get_query_var('paged')) ? absint(get_query_var('paged')) : 1; // if your custom loop is on a static front page then check for the query var 'page' instead of 'paged', see https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_query/#pagination-parameters
  $ordering                = WC()->query->get_catalog_ordering_args();
  $ordering['orderby']     = array_shift(explode(' ', $ordering['orderby']));
  $ordering['orderby']     = stristr($ordering['orderby'], 'price') ? 'meta_value_num' : $ordering['orderby'];
  $products_per_page       = apply_filters('loop_shop_per_page', wc_get_default_products_per_row() * wc_get_default_product_rows_per_page());

  $products_ids            = wc_get_products(array(
    'status'               => 'publish',
    'limit'                => $products_per_page,
    'page'                 => $paged,
    'paginate'             => true,
    'return'               => 'ids',
    'orderby'              => $ordering['orderby'],
    'order'                => $ordering['order'],
  ));

  wc_set_loop_prop('current_page', $paged);
  wc_set_loop_prop('is_paginated', wc_string_to_bool(true));
  wc_set_loop_prop('page_template', get_page_template_slug());
  wc_set_loop_prop('per_page', $products_per_page);
  wc_set_loop_prop('total', $products_ids->total);
  wc_set_loop_prop('total_pages', $products_ids->max_num_pages);

  if($products_ids) {
    do_action('woocommerce_before_shop_loop');
    woocommerce_product_loop_start();
      foreach($products_ids->products as $featured_product) {
        $post_object = get_post($featured_product);
        setup_postdata($GLOBALS['post'] =& $post_object);
        wc_get_template_part('content', 'product');
      }
      wp_reset_postdata();
    woocommerce_product_loop_end();
    do_action('woocommerce_after_shop_loop');
  } else {
    do_action('woocommerce_no_products_found');
  }

Using the code above, you would customize the wc_get_products() arguments to get the IDs of the products you want (if you have specific criteria). Once that code is in place, all the features of a native WooCommerce loop will be available to you—pagination, ordering, etc. This method is superior to WP_Query and get_posts() because those two methods can break.

I've written a more detailed blog post about custom WooCommerce loops here: https://cfxdesign.com/create-a-custom-woocommerce-product-loop-the-right-way/