I have this structure for my categories:

Issue 4
       - News
           - Supporting our troops
           - Breaking news

<?php
$category = get_the_category();
$parent = $category[0]->term_id;
?>

This code gets the top level category ID from "Breaking News" which is Issue 4, missing out News its direct parent category.

How could I get the category ID for "News", its direct parent category and not the top level category?

I have this structure for my categories:

Issue 4
       - News
           - Supporting our troops
           - Breaking news

<?php
$category = get_the_category();
$parent = $category[0]->term_id;
?>

This code gets the top level category ID from "Breaking News" which is Issue 4, missing out News its direct parent category.

How could I get the category ID for "News", its direct parent category and not the top level category?

• custom-taxonomy
• query
• categories

1 Answer 1

You need to use get_ancestors().

Assuming your post is only in one category, the following code should work (if it's in multiple you'll need to loop through each of the assigned categories to determine the various hierarchies).

$category = get_the_category();
$ancestors = get_ancestors( $category[0]->term_id, 'category' );
$direct_parent_id = $ancestors[0];

If you want to get the entire category hierarchy as an ordered array of IDs (which I like to have available) you'd do:

$category = get_the_category();
$hierarchy = array_reverse( get_ancestors( $category[0]->term_id, 'category' ) );
$hierarchy[] = $category[0]->term_id;