[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #27282: WP_Query returns more results when there are sticky posts

[WordPress Trac]

#27282: WP_Query returns more results when there are sticky posts
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 Reporter:  markoheijnen                         |       Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)                         |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  Future
Component:  Query                                |  Release
 Severity:  normal                               |     Version:
 Keywords:  stickies needs-unit-tests has-patch  |  Resolution:
                                                 |     Focuses:
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Changes (by bendoh):

 * keywords:  needs-patch stickies needs-unit-tests => stickies needs-unit-
     tests has-patch


Comment:

 There isn't a lot of traction on this ticket, but I would definitely call
 this a bug. It doesn't seem like a lot of people care, I'll venture a
 guess that in general, sticky posts have fallen out of favor. However this
 is acutely affecting me, so I'll take a crack at it.

 My read of the code in  tells me that:

 * (query.php:1738) The query given in the unit test will be considered
 (illogically?) to be is_home, so sticky posts will be added to it.

 * (query.php:3539-3577) Sticky posts will ever only show up if the query
 is_home, paged == 1, ignore_sticky_posts false.

 So when you ask for 3 posts, you might get more than 3 if there are sticky
 posts.

 The problem isn't exactly scalable either, if you have more than
 $posts_per_page sticky posts, you'll always get a full page of just
 stickies for paged=1, then paged > 1 won't have any of the sticky posts.
 Maybe I'm overthinking it here, and I realize this is an old feature
 that's falling out of favor anyway, so maybe it's entirely moot, and it
 looks like this has been discussed to death in #23336.

 I've attached a patch against the latest trunk which processes the sticky
 posts earlier on in the process.

 If ignore_sticky_posts is false, then the sticky posts are actually being
 queried are selected using the same rules that were there before:
 post_status='publish' and post_type=$post_type. Once those IDs are
 resolved, the WHERE clause is updated to add the selected sticky posts
 explictly, and the ORDER BY clause is prefixed to push the sticky posts to
 the front.

 This moves all of the work for aggregating the sticky posts into the
 database query. An EXPLAIN on this query doesn't show anything too scary.

 A bonus with this technique is that paging will work correctly with any
 number of sticky posts. Will need some further testing, though.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/27282#comment:6>
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