the_category with Excludes

The WordPress function the_category doesn’t offer an exclude parameter. This does:

function exclude_post_categories($excl='', $spacer=' ') {
  $categories = get_the_category(get_the_ID());
  if (!empty($categories)) {
    $exclude = $excl;
    $exclude = explode(",", $exclude);
    $thecount = count(get_the_category()) - count($exclude);
    foreach ($categories as $cat) {
      $html = '';
      if (!in_array($cat->cat_ID, $exclude)) {
        $html .= '<a href="' . get_category_link($cat->cat_ID) . '" ';
        $html .= 'title="' . $cat->cat_name . '">' . $cat->cat_name . '</a>';
        if ($thecount > 0) {
          $html .= $spacer;
        }
        $thecount--;
        echo $html;
      }
    }
  }
}

Plus as long as you have that, you can alter the output however you want which is nice.

Usage is like:

<?php exclude_post_categories("4"); ?>

Which would list all categories excluding the one with the ID of 4.

Comments

# July 14, 2014

Ey Up!

I use a very similar function.

Goes a little something like this…

function post_categories($spacer=" ",$exclude="",$id=false){
    //allow for specifiying id in case we
    //want to use the function to bring in 
    //another pages categories
    if(!$id){
        $id = get_the_ID();
    }
    //get the categories
    $categories = get_the_category($id);
    //split the exclude string into an array
    $exclude = explode(",",$exclude);
    //define array for storing results
    $result = array();
    //loop the cats
    foreach($categories as $cat){
        if(!in_array($cat-&gt;cat_ID,$exclude)){
            $result[] = "<a>term_id)."' title='".$cat-&gt;name."'&gt;".$cat-&gt;name."</a>";
        }
    }
    //add the spacer
    $result = implode($spacer,$result);
    //print out the result
    echo $result;

}

The replacing > and < and the quotes have messed up the function slightly but you get the idea.
I think it uses slightly simpler way of adding the spacers and also allowed specifying an id of another post.

Maybe it will be of use…

Maybe not :)

# June 10, 2015

There is a problem with this script. Let’s say I have 100 categories on the site… and I exclude 50 categories using the function above. What happens if there are only 5 categories in a post?

Well, the count would be 5-50 = -45. This messes up the “spacer”.

Alex

# August 18, 2016

Thanks!

Brad Dalton

# June 27, 2017

You could also use the_category filter or get_the_categories filter like this:

add_filter( 'get_the_categories', 'remove_category_link' );

function remove_category_link( $categories ) {

    if ( is_admin() ) 
        return $categories;

    $remove = array();

    foreach ( $categories as $category ) {

    if ( $category->name == "Featured" ) continue;

    $remove[] = $category;
    }
    return $remove;
}

blacklabelbrent

# April 12, 2018

If you don’t want a comma after your last item, then use

if ($thecount > 1) {

instead of

if ($thecount > 0) {

Pavlo

# May 31, 2021

Thanks for this great tutorial. It has helped me immensely. I was also wondering how to create nested (multilevel) categories. I’ve found this tutorial but not sure if it’s the best way to do so:
https://www.templatemonster.com/help/how-to-create-nested-multi-level-categories.html
What’s your opinion?

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