Get Order Notes from a Woocommerce Order / WC_Order object?

Question

I can add an order note (private note) with:

$order->add_order_note($info_for_order);

But when I tried to get the values in some page with:

get_comments(['post_id' => $order_id])
// or
$order_object->get_customer_order_notes()

It simply returns an empty array. I googled this and i can't find the method to do it.

Answer 1

Order notes (private note) are only available for backend when using get_comments() function.
If you look at WC_Comments exclude_order_comments() method you will see that front end queries are filtered regarding private order notes…

So the turn around is to build a custom function to get the private Order notes:

function get_private_order_notes( $order_id){
    global $wpdb;

    $table_perfixed = $wpdb->prefix . 'comments';
    $results = $wpdb->get_results("
        SELECT *
        FROM $table_perfixed
        WHERE  `comment_post_ID` = $order_id
        AND  `comment_type` LIKE  'order_note'
    ");

    foreach($results as $note){
        $order_note[]  = array(
            'note_id'      => $note->comment_ID,
            'note_date'    => $note->comment_date,
            'note_author'  => $note->comment_author,
            'note_content' => $note->comment_content,
        );
    }
    return $order_note;
}

Code goes in function.php file of your active child theme (or theme) or also in any plugin file.

This code is tested and works.

---

Usage (for example the $order_id = 6238 ):

$order_id = 6238;
$order_notes = get_private_order_notes( $order_id );
foreach($order_notes as $note){
    $note_id = $note['note_id'];
    $note_date = $note['note_date'];
    $note_author = $note['note_author'];
    $note_content = $note['note_content'];

    // Outputting each note content for the order
    echo '<p>'.$note_content.'</p>';
}