How do I automatically put categories and their descriptions on a WP Page?

2 comments

1. First you need to get all the categories that don’t have parents (top-level categories). We’re going to use get_terms for this. Get terms will either return an empty array, a WP_Error object, or an array of objects representing terms. So we need to make sure our call works before continuing as well.

   <?php
   // very hackish get_terms call with the 0 as a string to return top level terms
   $cats = get_terms( 'category', array( 'parent' => '0' ) );
   if( ! $cats || is_wp_error( $cats ) ) return;
   

   With that in place we can start by outputing a container div, then starting a foreach loop to loop through all the categories. We’ll output the term and link inside a paragraph as per your request above.

   <?php
   $out = '<div id="ref-list">' . "n";
   foreach( $cats as $cat )
   {
       $out .= sprintf( 
           '<p class="lit-author"><a href="%s">%s</a></p>',
           esc_url( get_term_link( $cat ) ),
           sanitize_term_field( 'name', $cat->name, $cat->term_id, 'category', 'display' )
       );
   
       $out .= "n"; // add some newlines to prettify our source
   

   Still inside our foreach( $cats as $cat ) loop, we can loop for term children. If we find them, we’ll loop through each child, getting its link, name, and description.

        <?php
       $children = get_term_children( $cat->term_id, 'category' );
       if( $children && ! is_wp_error( $children ) )
       {
           foreach( $children as $child )
           {
               $child = get_term( $child, 'category' );
               if( is_wp_error( $child ) ) continue;
               $out .= sprintf( 
                   '<p class="lit-work"><a href="%s"><em>%s</em></a>. %s</p>',
                   esc_url( get_term_link( $child ) ),
                   sanitize_term_field( 'name', $child->name, $child->term_id, 'category', 'display' ),
                   esc_attr( $child->description ) // sanitize_term_field adds autop, no good for this situation
               );
               $out .= "n"; // prettifying newline
           }
       }
   } // end of the foreach( $cats as $cat ) loop
   $out .= "</div>n";
   return $out;
   

   You can encapsulate this entire mess in a function (note: counts are added here, forgot them above).

   <?php
   function wpse25157_ref_list()
   {
       // very hackish get_terms call with the 0 as a string to return top level terms
       $cats = get_terms( 'category', array( 'parent' => '0' ) );
       if( ! $cats || is_wp_error( $cats ) ) return;
       $out = '<div id="ref-list">' . "n";
       foreach( $cats as $cat )
       {
           $out .= sprintf( 
               '<p class="lit-author"><a href="%s">%s</a> (%s)</p>',
               esc_url( get_term_link( $cat ) ),
               sanitize_term_field( 'name', $cat->name, $cat->term_id, 'category', 'display' ),
               sanitize_term_field( 'count', $cat->count, $cat->term_id, 'category', 'display' )
           );
   
           $out .= "n"; // add some newlines to prettify our source
   
           $children = get_term_children( $cat->term_id, 'category' );
           if( $children && ! is_wp_error( $children ) )
           {
               foreach( $children as $child )
               {
                   $child = get_term( $child, 'category' );
                   if( is_wp_error( $child ) ) continue;
                   $out .= sprintf( 
                       '<p class="lit-work"><a href="%s"><em>%s</em></a>. %s (%s)</p>',
                       esc_url( get_term_link( $child ) ),
                       sanitize_term_field( 'name', $child->name, $child->term_id, 'category', 'display' ),
                       esc_attr( $child->description ),
                       sanitize_term_field( 'count', $child->count, $child->term_id, 'category', 'display' )
                   );
                   $out .= "n"; // prettifying newline
               }
           }
       } // end of the foreach( $cats as $cat ) loop
       $out .= "</div>n";
       return $out;
   }
   

   And add a shortcode to display it all on any page/post you like.

   <?php
   add_action( 'init', 'wpse25157_init' );
   function wpse25157_init()
   {
       add_shortcode( 'ref-list', 'wpse25157_ref_list' );  
   }
   

   As a plugin: https://gist.github.com/1196457

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2. Copy page.php in your theme root and name it page-list-of-categories.php. Put the following at the top:

   <?php
   /**
    * Template Name: Page Category Display
    */
   ?>
   

   Somewhere after <?php the_title()?> place the following…

   <?php
   $args = array('title_li' => '');
   ?>
   <ul id="myCategories"><?php wp_list_categories($args);?></ul>
   

   Then make a page and select “Page Category Display” from the dropdown under “Template” in the “Page Attributes” box.

   The css classes you have above won’t be output, but you will be able to style them because it appears that your lit-work categories are always children of author categories. So you can refer to authors with ul#myCategories li and works as ul#myCategories li li.

   There are other options — passed in the $args array — for wp_list_categories that you can look into.

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