Determine the category identifier of the category page template in wordpress

Question

This is something that has troubled me for the better part of the day. I created a new category.php template file for my girlfriend's cooking blog (you can see it here ).

I wanted a specific layout for the category page - not the default one provided by the theme I use (Patchwork).

I googled around and eventually found that I could use the Wordpress PHP function <?php single_cat_title( $prefix, $display ); ?> <?php single_cat_title( $prefix, $display ); ?> as described in the Wordpress Codex . The point was then to use the Wordpress shortcode [catlist] . The shortcode can either take the category name or the category id.

I thought that would be it but unfortunately my girlfriend's blog is a bilingual one which means that single_cat_title doesn't always return the same value. It might return recipe in English and recette in French neither of which can be used to resolve the category in [catlist] . And if you think this is a corner case for bilingual blogs, it's not... It also applies to blogs that have categories with the same name (as to why you would have that, I don't know...)

All the other methods I could find were all specific to the_loop and not applicable in my case.

Anyway, I thought I would share the answer below for everyone's benefit. When I found it, it made my day!

Answer 1

The way to retrieve the current object identifier (be it a post, category, tag...) is to use the lower-level Wordpress objects and namely:

$wp_query->get_queried_object_id()

as described in Wordpress's class reference . The trick is to know the method name that gives you the property and Wordpress doesn't tell you that.

The closest described method is get_queried_object() (see function reference ).

The final template for my page is as follows:

<?php
/**
 * The Template for displaying posts in the category view.
 *
 */
 get_header(); ?>

        <div id="primary" class="site-content">
                        <h1><?php single_cat_title("");?></h1>
            <div id="content" role="main">
<?php echo do_shortcode('[catlist id='.$wp_query->get_queried_object_id().' orderby=date order=DESC excerpt=yes excerpt_size=25 thumbnail=yes numberposts=-1 template=del]'); ?>                
            </div><!-- #content -->
        </div><!-- #primary .site-content -->

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>