Alternate between 2 categories in wordpress - php

Question

I am wondering if there is a way to list posts from 2 categories in wordpress such that every fifth post is from different category. This is what I mean
Category B
Category A
Category A
Category A
Category A
Category B
and so on....
The sorting for each category will be based on date (descending)

Answer 1

Well its much complicated then its sounds, you wont find an exact method to do this, but you can work around it. For instance in your query you can get posts from 2 categories and then in the loop you can count them and if count is less than 5 display category A, else display category B. But the problem with this is that you dont know how many posts is it going to fetch from each category. It might fetch 2 posts from Category A and 3 From category B. So Instead its better if you use 2 different loops and save all the data in an array.
<?php
$args1 = array( 'posts_per_page' => -1, 'category' => 1 );
$args2 = array( 'posts_per_page' => -1, 'category' => 2 );
$posts_of_category_A = get_posts( $args1 );
$posts_of_category_B = get_posts( $args2 );
$check = 0;
foreach($posts_of_category_B as $posts_B){
// This will only show 1 post of category B;
// echo $posts_B->title (var_dump it)
for($i = $check; $i<$check+4; $i++ ){
// This will Show only first 4 posts of Categroy A
// Convert object to array, something $posts_B[$check]->title
}
$check += 3;
}
Its just a concept, there might be several changes to be made to this script. I know its kind of a hacky way to do this, but i cant think of a better way.