Displaying Post Views in Archive Pages

Update: to avoid parsing JSON in PHP, the custom query should be something like this:

SELECT
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(
        SUBSTRING_INDEX(
            option_value,
            '"post":{"ID":',
            -1
        ),
        ',"post_author"',
        1
    ) AS Post_ID,
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(
        SUBSTRING_INDEX(option_value, '"views":', -1),
        ',"years":',
        1
    ) AS Views
FROM
    _DDV_options
WHERE
    option_value LIKE '%"post":{"ID":1234%'
    or option_value LIKE '%"post":{"ID":5678%'

...
    or option_value LIKE '%"post":{"ID":9999%';

Update:

I ran a test for 20 actual posts in my websites and found out that my custom query would not resolve the issue as it is very slow (took about 7.5 seconds).

It is even worse using regular expressions (took 18.5 seconds).

The final result would be a list of key-value pairs.

Is there any alternative? Can’t we save the views counter in postmeta table or as a custom field in posts table?

That’s not an easy problem to solve, unfortunately.

The data you’re interested in (number of post views for a specific post ID) is originally stored on WordPress.com. When you use a shortcode from my plugin, my plugin relies on the API utilities available in the Jetpack plugin to call the WordPress.com REST API and get the number of views for that post.

The Jetpack API utility stores that data in a transient that remains valid for 5 minutes. It cannot really afford to cache that data for much longer, since the number of views for a given post is something your site visitors (and you as site admin) would expect to increment as you visit pages.

You’re seeing that cached data in the screenshot you posted here.

On my end, in my plugin I’m also doing a bit of caching by saving that data in the postmeta table, just like you suggested. For each post, you’ll find a _post_views key with serialized information about that post’s stats (the total post views for the post, and when it was cached).

However, for the same reasons as the Jetpack plugin, I cannot really afford to cache data for too long. I cache it for an hour.

I’m afraid I do not have a perfect solution to this problem. I can, however, make it a bit easier for you to rely on cached data for a longer period.

I’ve just released a new version of my plugin, and that version introduces a new filter that you will be able to use to cache the data longer. To use that filter, you would add the following snippet to your theme’s functions.php file, or to a functionality plugin:

/**
 * Cache post views for 6 hours.
 */
add_filter(
	'jp_post_views_cache_duration',
	function () {
		return 6 * HOUR_IN_SECONDS;
	}
);

In the example below, I’ve extended the default cache period from the 1 hour default to 6 hours instead.

Let me know if the new version of the plugin, and that filter, help.

Thank you for your clarification @jeherve, I did not notice that there is a _post_views key in postmeta table. Maybe I have searched by a post ID which its cache data had expired. I think this will solve my issue, especially after extending the cache period as per your advice. Thank you for your swift support.