I try to get the current post index number and echo the number of this lesson(post)in a series of lessons(category).

I'm inside the loop on single.php page

my code looks like this:

$args = array(
   'cat' => 22,
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

echo $query->current_post;
echo $query->post_count;

the "$query->post_count" works great and give me the number of the posts that are inside this category, but the "$query->current_post" don't work and give me "-1" all the time in every post...

what i'm doing wrong?

I try to get the current post index number and echo the number of this lesson(post)in a series of lessons(category).

I'm inside the loop on single.php page

my code looks like this:

$args = array(
   'cat' => 22,
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

echo $query->current_post;
echo $query->post_count;

the "$query->post_count" works great and give me the number of the posts that are inside this category, but the "$query->current_post" don't work and give me "-1" all the time in every post...

what i'm doing wrong?

• wp-query

2 Answers 2

What you are seeing is totally expected as you are trying to get the value of $current_post outside the loop. Before and after the loop, the value of $current_post will always be set to -1.

To get the proper value, you need to check $current_post inside the loop, the first post will be 0 and this will increase by one on every iteration of the loop.

For more info on creating the Post X of Y thing, check out these site searches on this issue

Thanks, Pieter.

Based on this answer, I made some changes to work on specific category. Here is my final code:

<div class="lessonNumber">
      <?php 

        class MY_Post_Numbers {

            private $count = 0;
            private $posts = array();

            public function display_count() {
                $this->init(); // prevent unnecessary queries
                $id = get_the_ID();
                echo __('שיעור', 'swgeula') . ' ' . $this->posts[$id] . ' ' . __('מתוך', 'swgeula') . ' ' . $this->count;
            }

            private function init() {
                if ( $this->count )
                return;
                $parent_cat = get_the_category()[0];
                $parent_cat_id = $parent_cat->cat_ID;
                global $wpdb;  
                $posts = $wpdb->get_col( "SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post' AND ID IN ( SELECT object_id FROM {$wpdb->term_relationships} WHERE term_taxonomy_id = '"  . $parent_cat_id . "' ) ORDER BY post_date " ); 
       
                // can add or change order if you want 
                $this->count = count($posts);
  

                foreach ( $posts as $key => $value ) {
                    $this->posts[$value] = $key + 1;
                }
                unset($posts);
            }

        }

        $GLOBALS['my_post_numbers'] = new MY_Post_Numbers;

        function my_post_number() {
            $GLOBALS['my_post_numbers']->display_count();
        }

        my_post_number(); 

    ?>
</div>