Wordpress-seo: Template tag to get primary category

[jdevalk]

Well, yeah. That.

yoast_seo_primary_term() ofzo.

[qikkeronline]

:+1:

for the people who want to do this now, this worked for me:

    $cat = new WPSEO_Primary_Term('category', get_the_ID());
    $cat = $cat->get_primary_term();

[qikkeronline]

It would be great if we could apply this to taxonomies as well :+1: the UI in the backend doesnt seem to work on taxonomies.

Would also be great to have it hook into get_the_category() to make sure the first object in the array is always the primary taxonomy; overridable by a filter or so!

Thanks by the way, nice feature.

[sgirjon]

@qikkeronline Cheers for dropping the lookup in here - do you know if its possible to display the cat name rather than the ID?

[qikkeronline]

@sgirjon
on the next line:

$cat = get_category($cat); // this will contain all category data, including the name
var_dump($cat); // find out how to get the title, probably sth like $cat->name or $cat->term_name or so (no time to look it up for you, soz) 

[sgirjon]

Thanks for taking a look @qikkeronline - it seems to not want to display the category name still - does anyone know if this is just a missing feature or just that I'm missing something?

[qikkeronline]

@sgirjon can you drop your code (the entire php template) here? Might have to do with your loop or so.

[JoshCarey]

Just if anyone stumbles upon this to try and get the primary category name (and the category link as well)... This got it working for me:

$cat = new WPSEO_Primary_Term('category', get_the_ID());
$cat = $cat->get_primary_term();
$catName = get_cat_name($cat);
$catLink = get_category_link($cat);
echo $catName;
echo $catLink;

[JacobDB]

Is there a way to do this with custom taxonomies? Seems to be just returning blank after the $cat->get_primary_term(). I did change 'category' to my custom taxonomies name.

[JacobDB]

Nevermind, it doesn't return anything if you don't set a primary category 😑

[JoshCarey]

I ended up using this:

<?php
$primaryCat = new WPSEO_Primary_Term('category', get_the_ID());
$primaryCat = $primaryCat->get_primary_term();
$primaryCat = get_cat_name($primaryCat);

$categories = get_the_category();
foreach( $categories as $category ) {
   $defaultCat = $category->name;
   $defaultCatLink = get_category_link( $category->term_id );
}

if ( $primaryCat !== "" ) {
   $cat = new WPSEO_Primary_Term('category', get_the_ID());
   $cat = $cat->get_primary_term();

   $catName = get_cat_name($cat);
   $catLink = get_category_link($cat);

} else {
   $catName = $defaultCat;
   $catLink = $defaultCatLink;
}
?>

<h3><a href="<?php echo $catLink; ?>"><?php echo $catName; ?></a></h3>

Hopefully that will help out a little?

[ThomasHoadley]

Is there a way to do this with custom categories?? None of the above answers have worked for me and desperately need this function!!

[jacobarriola]

@ThomasHoadley you could try and use get_terms() to retrieve custom taxonomies instead of get_the_category() when declaring the $categories variable. They both return the WP_Term object, so you might be in good shape. https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_terms/

[johnojha]

the below code worked for me to get the primary category that is set up in the admin section

$primary_cat_id=get_post_meta($product->id,'_yoast_wpseo_primary_product_cat',true);
if($primary_cat_id){
$product_cat = get_term($primary_cat_id, 'product_cat');
if(isset($product_cat->name))
echo $product_cat->name;
}

[qikkeronline]

So the code I posted above was just working on categories; this will do the same for any taxonomy:

$wpseo_primary_term = new WPSEO_Primary_Term('your_taxonomy_name', $your_post_ID);
$wpseo_primary_term = $wpseo_primary_term->get_primary_term();
$wpseo_primary_term = get_term($wpseo_primary_term);

At this point the $wpseo_primary_term variable contains the entire term object (see https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_term#Return_Values) of the primary term of your post, and values can be retrieved like this:

$wpseo_primary_term->term_id;
$wpseo_primary_term->name;
$wpseo_primary_term->parent;