List all categories and count number of posts within based on custom date

Question

I used this solution to count number of posts for each category (list). The counting is based on date post event (only from today's date).

I got nothing var_dump show result of new WP_Query . but $count_posts->count return nUll for each category at least one category must display one post in my case. does "count" function well display "0" if result is null or category doesn't contain posts ?

<ul id="sscat">
            <span class="rot90 cwhite" style="transform: rotate(-90deg);">Filtre</span>
            <i class="icofont-caret-right icofont-2x cwhite" style="margin-left: -15px;"></i>
            <div class="slide_cat w-100 height-auto df fdrow ">
                    
                
                <li class="js-filter-cat item all category_selected" data-category="all">Tous <span class="count-post"></span></li>
            <?php 
                
            $filter_catactu_args = array(
                'exclude'=>array(1),
                'option_all' => 'All',
                'show_count' => '1'
            ); 
                
            $cats_filter = get_categories($filter_catactu_args);
            
            foreach($cats_filter as $cat_filter) : 
                
                $countdatestart  = strftime("%Y-%m-%d");
                $count_posts_per_category = array(
                    'post_type'     => 'post',
                    'posts_per_page'=> -1,
                    'meta_key'      => 'start_dateevents',
                    'cat'           => $cat_filter->cat_ID,
                    'orderby' => 'meta_value',
                        'meta_query' => array(
                            array(
                                'key' => 'start_dateevents',
                                'type'=> 'DATE',
                                'meta_value' => '',
                                'value' => $countdatestart,
                                'compare' => '>='
                            )
                        ) 
                );
                
                $count_posts = new WP_Query($count_posts_per_category);
                //echo '<pre>' , var_dump($count_posts) , '</pre>';
                $posts_per_cat = $count_posts->count;
                echo '<li class="js-filter-cat item" data-category="'. $cat_filter->term_id .'"> '. $cat_filter->name .'<span classs="count-post">'. $posts_per_cat .'</span> </li>';
            endforeach;
            
            ?></div>
    </ul>

Answer 1

If you just want to count the total number of posts that matched a specific query, then there's no need to set the posts_per_page to -1. Just set it to 1 instead.

And $count_posts->count returns null because the WP_Query class doesn't have a property named $count, i.e. WP_Query::$count does not exist.

WP_Query does have $post_count property, but that is just the number of posts displayed per page, so you would not use it in your case. Instead, what you would use is the $found_posts property which is the total number of posts found for the query.

So instead of $posts_per_cat = $count_posts->count;, use $posts_per_cat = $count_posts->found_posts;.

And you can check all the properties in WP_Query on this page.