Get WordPress comments outside of WordPress

Update: Apparently this code is also necessary when you want to list the comments on the blog page, and probably on archive pages as well. There could be a better solution, if you really care check out the P2 theme (and leave a comment).

Sometimes you want to access WordPress content outside of WordPress. There are various pages that explain how to this and it's really easy to do as well. What I tried to do was a little different though, I wanted to print comments outside of WordPress.

To my surprise wp_list_comments() didn't output anything inside my custom loop. It turned out that $wp_query->comments was NULL, which I think is rather odd. I would have expected it to be defined like in a normal loop inside WordPress. However, the fix is trivial:

 <?php
    global $post, $wp_query;
    $args = array(
        'ID'       => $post->ID,
        'status' => 'approve',
        'order'   => 'ASC'
    );
    $wp_query->comments = get_comments( $args );
    wp_list_comments( );
    comment_form();
}?>

comment_form() is a WordPress 3.0 feature by the way, so you may not want to use it yet.

10 comments

capnbarfy wrote this comment on June 9, 2011, 9:49 p.m.

Thanks! Worked like a charm! :)
andykras wrote this comment on July 10, 2011, 8:41 p.m.

thanx for solution! i encountered the same problem and change 'ID' to 'post_id' :)
Hridaya Ghimire wrote this comment on Nov. 18, 2011, 1:35 p.m.
Its not working for me . Even i replace $post-ID with static id of the post. like
```
<?php 
global $post,$wp_query;
 $args = array(
 'ID' => '12',
 'status' => 'approve',
 'order' => 'ASC'
 );
 $wp_query->comments = get_comments( $args );
 wp_list_comments( );
 //comment_form();
 comments_template( '', true ); 
?>
```
i got all the post of the all post not fro particular post and did not saw any comment post form there. I have a custom page outside of wordpress instal directory and this is the post details page. Thank you
Nicolas Kuttler wrote this comment on Nov. 20, 2011, 8:46 a.m.

I don't think that you can pass a string as ID.
ayuk wrote this comment on Nov. 22, 2011, 12:30 p.m.

try this : $args = array( 'post_id' => $post->ID, 'status' => 'approve', 'order' => 'ASC' );
tracersa wrote this comment on March 8, 2012, 7:26 p.m.

i am trying to make use of this..but one question, how will the comment know to which post it has go? $post->ID what does this do?
Nicolas Kuttler wrote this comment on March 9, 2012, 1:54 p.m.

No idea how the comment form works. I'd guess the ID is passed as a hidden field. Just check a normal comment form.
Luke wrote this comment on Feb. 12, 2013, 4:13 a.m.

Cheers mate, worked a charm for me. The best solution i've seen to pull in comments outside of the loop so far.
Timple.it wrote this comment on Aug. 1, 2013, 5:02 p.m.

It`s work for me: Before wp_list_comments(); $wp_query->comments = array_reverse(get_approved_comments(##POSTID##));
Latesha wrote this comment on Jan. 18, 2015, 4:10 a.m.

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10 comments

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