WP Query foreach loop - repeats the same post - php

Question

I have spent hours on this - hoping someone who knows a bit of PHP can solve it painlessly.
I have a Wordpress query loop which needs to be concatenated together. It kind of works, but I have requested 6 posts, and all 6 are the same!
Here's the code snippet which returns the duplicate posts:
////* New tab *//////
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 6, 'orderby' => 'post_date' );
$postslist = get_posts( $args );
$content .= '<div class="tab" id="new"><ul>';
foreach ($postslist as $post) : setup_postdata($post);
$content .= '<li><a href="' . get_permalink() . '"</a>' . get_the_title() . '</a></li>';
endforeach;
$content .= '</ul></div>';
return $content; // prints all the contents stringed together
This code produces this list:
Any help appreciated...at all! Thanks.

Answer 1

It looks like your code example is taken from inside a function.
a) Please try this:
// ... cut ...
global $post;
$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 6, 'orderby' => 'post_date' );
$postslist = get_posts( $args );
$content .= '<div class="tab" id="new"><ul>';
foreach ( $postslist as $post ) : setup_postdata( $post );
$content .= sprintf( '<li>%s</li>',
get_permalink(),
get_the_title() );
endforeach;
$content .= '</ul></div>';
wp_reset_postdata();
return $content; // prints all the contents stringed together
where I added the global $post declaration so setup_postdata( $post ) can modify the global $post object.
b) Or try this:
// ... cut ...
$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 6, 'orderby' => 'post_date' );
$postslist = get_posts( $args );
$content .= '<div class="tab" id="new"><ul>';
foreach ( $postslist as $post ) :
$content .= sprintf( '<li>%s</li>',
get_permalink( $post->ID ),
get_the_title( $post->ID ) );
endforeach;
$content .= '</ul></div>';
return $content; // prints all the contents stringed together
where I used the post id as an input argument for get_permalink() and get_the_title().
c) You can also use the raw post title: $post->post_title or if you want to take it through the the_title filter with:
echo apply_filters( 'the_title', $post->post_title );
So to wrap it up:
Notice that get_the_title() is based on get_post(), and if you don't use an input argument, then it will try to use the global $post object:
if ( empty( $post ) && isset( $GLOBALS['post'] ) )
$post = $GLOBALS['post'];
Therefore you always get the same global post object title (usually from the main query) if you don't modify the global object within the secondary loop.
Hope this helps.