I'm fairly new to wordpress and am coming across new things each day - one was today when I happened across get_terms and noticed that it was basically the same as get_category.
Any particular reason to use one or the other? Is there something that I'm missing?
I'm fairly new to wordpress and am coming across new things each day - one was today when I happened across get_terms and noticed that it was basically the same as get_category.
Any particular reason to use one or the other? Is there something that I'm missing?
Share Improve this question asked May 24, 2012 at 23:18 Stephen S.Stephen S. 1,0292 gold badges13 silver badges21 bronze badges3 Answers
Reset to default 8As you dive into WordPress, you'll find that WordPress has a lot of wrapper functions. For instance, there's add_theme_page that's just a wrapper of add_submenu_page. That's certainly not the only example (add_submenu_page itself has a bunch of wrappers, in fact). If you look at the source for get_categories(), you'll see that it too is a wrapper for get_terms() (I just learned that myself, so thanks!).
I find that the taxonomy-related functions are some of the most convoluted. A lot of them take very similar arguments and return similar things with little differences. In this case, get_terms() has a name__like parameter that get_category() doesn't. There are probably other little differences too.
As a personal preference, I try to use get_terms() as much as possible. In some cases, like add_theme_page that's the recommended function (presumably so WordPress could make changes to the Theme page and keep that function working), but in other cases like this one, I don't think it makes much of a difference. If nothing else, the familiarity helps me do more with it faster. However, some of the functions that return HTML lists like wp_list_categories() can be useful at times.
One of the most important (and not very obvious) differences between get_terms() and get_categories() is that get_categories() is a wrapper function for get_terms('category'). This means that you cannot get custom taxonomies with get_categories() and must use get_terms() instead.
It is possible to query custom taxonomy with get_categories
example:
// Taxonomy query
$venue_args = array(
'child_of' => $venue_id,
'taxonomy' => 'wpmf-category',
'hide_empty' => false
);
$venue_cats = get_categories( $venue_args );