Parentless Categories

This plugin provides a template tag which acts as a modified version of WordPress’s built-in template tag, the_category(). the_category() lists all categories directly assigned to the specified post. c2c_parentless_categories() lists those categories, except for categories that are parents to other assigned categories.

For example, assume your category structure is hierarchical and looks like this:

Vegetables
|-- Leafy
|   |-- Broccoli
|   |-- Bok Choy
|   |-- Celery
|-- Fruiting
|   |-- Bell Pepper
|   |-- Cucumber
|   |-- Pumpkin
|-- Podded
|   |-- Chickpea
|   |-- Lentil
|   |-- Soybean

If you directly assigned the categories “Fruiting”, “Cucumber”, and “Pumpkin” to a post, c2c_parentless_categories() would return a list that consists of: “Cucumber”, and “Pumpkin”. Notice that since “Fruiting” was a parent to a directly assigned category, it is not included in the list.

By default, categories are listed as an HTML list. The first argument to the template tag allows you to define a custom separator, e.g. to have a simple comma-separated list of categories: <?php c2c_parentless_categories( ',' ); ?>.

As with categories listed via the_category(), categories that are listed are presented as links to the respective category’s archive page.

Example usage (based on preceding example):

• <?php c2c_parentless_categories(); ?>

Outputs something like:

<ul><li><a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/cucumber">Cucumber</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/pumpkin">Pumpkin</a></li></ul>

• <?php c2c_parentless_categories( ',' ); ?></ul>

Outputs something like:

<a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/cucumber">Cucumber</a>, <a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/pumpkin">Pumpkin</a>

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Developer Documentation

Developer documentation can be found in DEVELOPER-DOCS.md. That documentation covers the template tags and hooks provided by the plugin.

As an overview, these are the template tags provided by the plugin:

• c2c_parentless_categories() : Outputs the parentless categories.
• c2c_get_parentless_categories_list() : Returns the list of parentless categories.
• c2c_get_parentless_categories() : Returns the list of parentless categories for the specified post.

These are the hooks provided by the plugin:

• c2c_parentless_categories (action), c2c_get_parentless_categories_list, c2c_get_parentless_categories (filters) :
  Allows for an alternative approach to safely invoke each of the identically named functions in such a way that if the plugin were deactivated or deleted, then your calls to the functions won’t cause errors on your site.
• c2c_parentless_categories_list (filter) :
  Customizes the return value of the c2c_parentless_categories_list() function.
• c2c_get_parentless_categories_omit_ancestors (filter) :
  Customizes the function argument indicating if ancestor categories of all directly assigned categories (even if directly assigned themselves) should be omitted from the return list of categories.

Find out more at the plugin’s WordPress Plugin Repository page.

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or install the plugin code inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
3. Optional: Add filters for ‘c2c_parentless_categories_list’ to filter parentless category listing
4. Use the template tag <?php c2c_parentless_categories(); ?> in a theme template somewhere inside “the loop”