I want to retrieve WooCommerce products from inside of the front-page.php with the following code:

$args = array();
$products = wc_get_products($args);

So that I could could reiterate through them and output with a custom markup. However it returns an empty array, even though products do exist. When I use echo do_shortcode('[products]') inside the front-page.php, it returns products as expected. Shortcodes go with their own markups, so their use in my custom theme would be undesired. Also wc_get_product($id) works fine to retrieve a single product.

I’ve tried passing arguments to wc_get_products(), such as ['limit' => -1, 'status' => 'publish'], but it still doesn’t work. What am I doing wrong?