How to exclude password protected posts in WordPress loop

I have a custom post type that supports password protected entries. In a custom loop using a new WP_Query object, I want to exclude those password protected posts from the results. What arguments do I need set in order to do this? I am using the latest trunk version of WordPress 3.2.1.

Did you take a look at the [post_status argument](

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) of WP_Query?

"Protected" seems like a good candidate to exclude.

**_Edit:_** Okay, it seems like you'll have to modify the where clause to achieve what you want:

// Create a new filtering function that will add our where clause to the query
function filter_where( $where = '' ) {
// exclude password protected
$where .= " AND post_password = ''";
return $where;
}

if (!is_single()) { add_filter( 'posts_where', 'filter_where' ); }
$query = new WP_Query( $query_string );
remove_filter( 'posts_where', 'filter_where' );

After a bit of playing about, I found the posts_where filter a bit too intrusive for what I wanted to do, so I came up with an alternative. As part of the 'save_post' action that I attached for my custom post type, I added the following logic;

$visibility = isset($_POST['visibility']) ? $_POST['visibility'] : '';
$protected = get_option('__protected_posts', array());

if ($visibility === 'password' && !in_array($post->ID, $protected)) {
array_push($protected, $post->ID);
}
if ($visibility === 'public' && in_array($post->ID, $protected)) {
$i = array_search($post->ID, $protected);
unset($protected[$i]);
}
update_option('__protected_posts', $protected);

What this does is hold an array of post id's in the options table where the post is protected by a password. Then in a custom query I simply passed this array as part of the `post__not_in` option e.g.

$query = new WP_Query(array(
'post_type' => 'my_custom_post_type',
'post__not_in' => get_option('__protected_posts'),
));

This way I could exclude the protected posts from an archive page but still allow a user to land on the password protected page to enter the password.

I really like Kevin's approach, but I adjusted it slightly:

// Create a new filtering function that will add our where clause to the query
function my_password_post_filter( $where = '' ) {
// Make sure this only applies to loops / feeds on the frontend
if (!is_single() && !is_admin()) {
// exclude password protected
$where .= " AND post_password = ''";
}
return $where;
}
add_filter( 'posts_where', 'my_password_post_filter' );

In addition to @Peter Chester's answer:

You may also want to exclude password-protected posts from the `Previous Post` and `Next Post` links, if you have those at the bottom of your post page.

To do so you can add the exclusion to the `get_previous_post_where` and `get_next_post_where` hooks.

add_filter( 'get_previous_post_where', 'my_theme_mod_adjacent' );
add_filter( 'get_next_post_where', 'my_theme_mod_adjacent' );
function my_theme_mod_adjacent( $where ) {
return $where . " AND p.post_password = ''";
}

I come up to this question where I was looking for the same. However, I read WP_Query document line by line then found very simple solution and that is just to add `'has_password' => false` argument to the query `$args`

So the code will be as below...

$args = [
'post_type' => [ 'post', 'page' ],
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post__not_in' => get_option( 'sticky_posts' ),
'has_password' => FALSE
];

Here you can see I have excluded `Sticky` and `Password Protected` posts.