WordPress Custom Taxonomies

A PHP class to help register and maintain WordPress custom taxonomies. It also comes with some rad built-in properties and methods that can be used in templates to maintain clean code and modular development.

For more information about registering taxonomies, including a full list of options, visit the WordPress Codex.

This class works well with the WordPress Custom Post Type class. They were made for each other <3.

Declaring New Taxonomies

Include custom-taxonomy.php in your functions.php file.

Declare the various argument arrays to setup the new taxonomy as needed (name and post_type are required):

// required
$args['name'] = '';

// The post type/s that the taxonomy is connected to.
// String or array
$args['post_type'] = '';

// optional
$args['labels'] = array(
  'singular'        => '',
  'plural'          => '',
  'menu'            => ''
 );

 $args['options'] = array(
  'public'                => true,
  'show_ui'               => true,
  'show_in_nav_menus'     => true,
  'show_tagcloud'         => true,
  'hierarchical'          => false,
  'update_count_callback' => null,
  'query_var'             => true,
  'rewrite'               => true,
  'capabilities'          => array(),
  'sort'                  => null
 );

$args['help'] = '';

Then create a variable (for future reference, but is not required) from an instance of the Bamboo_Custom_Taxonomy class:

$Taxonomy = new Bamboo_Custom_Taxonomy($args);

You can even quick declare a Taxonomy by just passing the name and associated post type two strings. So for a Taxonomy of of genre for the post type movie, just pass:

$Genre = new Bamboo_Custom_Taxonomy('genre', 'movie');

Usage

The custom taxonomy class creates a handfull of useful properties and methods that can be accessed through the taxonomy's instance variable and can be used in template and admin files.

Properties

$Taxonomy->name

The taxonomy slug.

$Taxonomy->lables

An array of the singular, plural and menu lables.

Methods

$Taxonomy->get()

Get all the terms assigned to this taxonomy. Accepts an array of arguments, and a boolean value to retrieve just a single value (true, useful to use along side 'include' => array( $single_id ) ) or an array of results (false).

For example:

$taxonomies = $Taxonomy->get();

Note: A declaration of global $Taxonomy; might be required on some template files.

See the Get Terms => Parameters codex reference for the list of possible arguments, and the Get Terms => Return Values codex reference for the list of return values.