Get id of category from drop down menu

2 Views

Im trying to get the category ID from wp_dropdown_categories();and then pass the ID into a loop to have it output posts titles from that particular category.

I currently have this:

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   <form action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" method="get">
        <?php wp_dropdown_categories(); ?>
    </form>
        <div class="cat-list">
                <ul>
                <?php 
                global $post;
                $args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 5, 'category' => $_GET['value']);
                $myposts = get_posts( $args );
                foreach ( $myposts as $post ) : 
                  setup_postdata( $post ); ?>
                <li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
                <?php endforeach;
                wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
                </ul>

        </div>

But it’s not grabbing the category ID from the $_GET['value'] and I’m not sure what I need to do to get it to pass that ID to the array.

Eventually, I’d like to have it so that when you select a different category that it will show the posts associated with that selected category.
But I figured that I’d try to get the select to work first and then move on from there.

Post Views: 2

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3 comments

  1. You’re on the right track with using a form, the only thing you’re missing, you have to submit what you have selected. For example like this:

    <form method="GET" action="">
    <div>
        <?php
            $select = wp_dropdown_categories('show_option_none=Select category&orderby=name&echo=0');
            $select = preg_replace("#<select([^>]*)>#", "<select$1 onchange='return this.form.submit()'>", $select);
            echo $select;
        ?>
        <noscript>
            <div>
                <input type="submit" value="View" />
            </div>
        </noscript>
    </div>
</form>

    Code adapted from the example section of the wp_dropdown_categories() codex page, there are other examples, take a look. I changed one thing, the form action is empty, because we want to stay on the page.
    The variable you want would be $_GET['cat']; additionally you can visually see that by looking to the browser address bar, there is now something like this ?cat=1, a query string, after you selected a category. If you don’t want the query string to show, you actually can change the form method to POST and the variable to $_POST['cat'].

    Edit:

    On the home page this will redirect to the category archive, because wordpress reacts to the query string cat. In this case you have to add the name parameter to wp_dropdown_categories() and choose a unique name, in above example like this:

    wp_dropdown_categories('show_option_none=Select category&orderby=name&echo=0&name=uniquename');

    which leads to the variable name being $_GET['uniquename'] or $_POST['uniquename'].

    2nd Edit:

    On first page load there is no $_GET[‘uniquename’] variable set, so your get_posts query will, will operate with an empty value, which leads to all post been shown. To prevent this setup a variable like shown below and use it in your arguments array.

    $gp_cat = (isset($_GET['uniquename']) ? $_GET['uniquename'] : '5');
$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 5, 'category' => $gp_cat);

  2. The $_GET['value'] is related to the NAME attribute from your SELECT. The select name can be changed using the name parameter in the wp_dropdown_categories() function too. Use print_r($_GET); to see what values your form is submitting and then use them in your get_posts() query.

  3. You can print your id echo $termss->term_id in drop down

        $terms = get_terms( 'category', array(
    'hide_empty' => false,
    'order_by' => 'name',
    'order' => 'ASC',
    'number' => 0,
    'taxonomy' => 'category'
) );

     //print_r($terms);

     foreach($terms as  $termss)
    {
    //echo "<br/>";
     //echo $termss->term_id;
        //echo "<br/>";
        ?>
    <h1> echo $termss->term_id</h1>
     <?php 
        //echo "<br/>";
      //echo $termss->slug;
      }

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