"any" value in "post_type" param in "get_posts" by default ignore attachments

[dam6pl]

When creating a simple call to get all posts for all post types by default to the parameters are adding post_status parameter with publish value.

<?php
get_posts(['post_type' => 'any']);

To the WP_Query instance are supplied followed arguments:

<?php //wp-includes/post.php:2053
[ 
  "numberposts" => 5
  "category" => 0
  "orderby" => "date"
  "order" => "DESC"
  "include" => []
  "exclude" => []
  "meta_key" => ""
  "meta_value" => ""
  "post_type" => "any"
  "suppress_filters" => true
  "post_status" => "publish"
  "posts_per_page" => 5
  "ignore_sticky_posts" => true
  "no_found_rows" => true
]

All attachment posts have inherit post status so by default are ignored in this query.

To actually get all post types the first function parameters should be expended by post_status parameter with ['publish', 'inherit'] value.

<?php
get_posts(['post_type' => 'any', 'post_status' => ['publish', 'inherit']]);

[peterwilsoncc]

@dam6pl Hello and welcome to trac.

I've been able to reproduce this issue (or more accurately, hit it recently).

I suspect the reason behind this is because there would need to be fairly unperformant database queries in order to correctly determine the attachment's inherited status based on the parent post, ie does it inherit from publish or private. Knowing this becomes important when considering the user's permissions with the WP_Query perm argument.

This is not to rule out a fix but to let you know it's more complicated than it might appear at first so any fix is unlikely to have a quick turnaround as it's not a simple case of adding inherit.

Again, welcome and thanks for logging the report.

[dam6pl]

@peterwilsoncc fully understand and agree with you. But for me this behavior was unclear and I had to check the get_posts function source to find the reason so maybe it could be a good point to mention that somewhere in the documentation?

[peterwilsoncc]

Yes, some clearer docs can certainly be added.

Does this work:

• update status docs to the WP_Query docs clarifing that inherit is excluded ​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/wp_query/#status-parameters
• add a reference to WP_Query in the see also links.

I have added a docs focus to this ticket for the original commit to clarify.

[peterwilsoncc]

I have updated the WP_Query documentation in the developer handbook to note that ​the `inherit` status is also excluded from any.

In 51852.diff​ I have changed the get_posts() documentation to:

Retrieves an array of the latest posts, or posts matching the given criteria.

For more information on the accepted arguments, see the ​WP_Query documentation in the Developer Handbook.

The $ignore_sticky_posts and $no_found_rows arguments are ignored by this function and both are set to true.

Following out discussion above, I've moved this on to the 5.7 milestone for the documentation changes.

[peterwilsoncc]

In 50257:

Posts/Post Types: Improve documentation of get_posts().

Add references to WP_Query to the documentation of get_posts(). As the developer documentation for WP_Query includes an expanded explanation a full link to developer.wordpress.org is included rather than a standard @see.

Props dam6pl, peterwilsoncc.
See #51852, #51800.