On the category page, get the category object

5 comments

1. To get the category object use get_category (codex). It’s easy if you know the name, slug or ID, but if you don’t you could use is_category to check on which category you are and pass the ID to get_category.

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2. Damn, so I did find the answer I was looking for:

   $thisCat = get_category(get_query_var('cat'),false);
   

   Never mind 🙂

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3. $wp_query->get_queried_object() is a very versatile function. It will return the current category, tag, custom taxonomy term, author, page or post, depending on the page/archive you are viewing. Especially handy if you want to simplify your archive headings.

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4. I’d personally get into a habit of calling get_term or get_terms, as the category functions are only wrapper functions that in turn call get_term(s) anyway.

   <?php 
   $queried_category = get_term( get_query_var('cat'), 'category' ); 
   
   // echo $queried_category->term_id; // The category ID
   // echo $queried_category->slug; // The category slug
   // echo $queried_category->name; // The category name 
   // echo $queried_category->description; // The category description 
   ?> 
   

   Familiaring yourself with the term functions will make dealing with custom taxonomies a little easier, because you’ll be calling on these functions in such cases.

   http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_term
   http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_terms

   And a function that i don’t see used a great deal, but can be really handy.
   http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_term_by
   Which provides a means of fetching a term object based on name, slug or ID.

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5. An interesting case wherein one of many category archive pages included in a custom menu returned an empty array for

   get_the_category();
   

   required me to run through all the different ways to skin a cat (no pun intended).

   is_category() RETURNS true
   get_the_category() RETURNS an empty array
   the_category() RETURNS NULL
   

   The final answer ended up being Ben Everard‘s

    get_category(get_query_var('cat'), false) RETURNS the correct WPCategory object
   

   Thanks!

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