How to display pad_counts for hierarchical taxonomies

I would like a bit more information so I can give you the most helpful answer. Can you tell me how you generate the list of terms on your index page, and in the dropdown lists in the sidebar? What have you tried that is not working?

I have looked at some of the WordPress code that implements the terms list and it has special behavior for pad_counts. If you are using WordPress functions it would be helpful to know which function(s) and what arguments you are using.

In the current MLA version the [mla_tag_cloud] shortcode does not support pad_counts because it does not use the WordPress functions to generate the list.

Any additional information you can give me would be very helpful.

I believe the WordPress wp_list_categories and get_terms functions rely on a “count” column in the term_taxonomy database table to compute the pad_count values. This column does not always have accurate counts for attachments/media library items. That is why MLA provides a replacement “Attachments” column in the Media/Att. Categories submenu.

You can use the Attachments column to look at a few of your terms and see if the counts add up with and without the pad_counts argument. You may find that the counts are not always right in either case.

I am traveling until June 10, but I can do more investigation when I am back home. Let me know if you can compare the “Attachments” column values with the get_terms values. Thanks for your understanding and your patience.

Thank you for the update and the link to the Codex page. Thanks as well for confirming that the counts associated with your terms are correct.

I will dig deeper into this issue when I return from my trip, and I will post any progress here.

Thanks again for your patience.

Thanks for your help and your patience while I worked on the “pad_counts” issue you identified. I have made some enhancements to the [mla_tag_cloud] shortcode and its supporting MLAShortcodes::mla_get_terms( $attr ) function to address the problem. In particular, I have added post_type, post_status and pad_counts parameters.

As I posted above, the database counts cannot be used for pad_counts because they contain the total count for each term. If a post/page/attachment has been assigned to both a parent and a child term, e.g., parent “flora”/”landscape” and child “flower”/”mountains”, it will be counted in both terms’ database counts. However, the pad_counts result should only count it once and thus a separate SQL query is required.

The database counts also have some other special logic, such as counting attachments only if they are actually attached to a published parent post/page (but not when _update_generic_term_count is used).

The post_type field can have many values (post, page, attachment, revision, nav_menu_item and any registered custom post type). The MLA shortcode and supporting function allows all type values, e.g., “attachment” for attachments.

The post_status field can have many values (publish, future, draft, pending, private, trash, auto-draft, inherit). By default, WordPress only allows publish status. The MLA shortcode and supporting function allows all status values, e.g., “inherit” for attachments and “private” when the user is logged in.

For taxonomies such as attachment_category and attachment_tag you want to count post_type=attachment and post_status=inherit; these are the MLA defaults. For the WordPress category and post_tag taxonomies you would normally want post_type=post and post_status=publish or post_status="publish,private".

If you use a taxonomy such as category or post_tag for pages and/or attachments, the parameter values depend on what you want to count. To get a complete count of all objects assigned to the terms you would code: post_type="post,page,attachment and post_status="publish,private,inherit". Both type and status values must be considered to get the count you want.

The new parameters can be added to the [mla_tag_cloud] shortcode, and you can use the supporting MLAShortcodes::mla_get_terms( $attr ) function from your PHP code as a substitute for the WordPress get_terms() function. For your site, I believe the appropriate parameters would be:

$attr = array (
  'taxonomy' => 'category',
  'post_mime_type' => 'all',
  'post_type' => 'attachment',
  'post_status' => 'inherit',
  'pad_counts' => 'true',
  'limit' => 0,
  'offset' => 0,
);

Most of the above parameters are actually the default values, so you could also code:

$attr = array (
  'taxonomy' => 'category',
  'pad_counts' => 'true',
);

Calling the function would be coded as:

$terms = MLAShortcodes::mla_get_terms( $attr );

The function would return something like:

$terms = array (
  0 =>
  stdClass::__set_state(array(
     'term_id' => '5',
     'name' => 'General Cat',
     'slug' => 'general',
     'term_group' => '0',
     'term_taxonomy_id' => '5',
     'taxonomy' => 'category',
     'description' => '',
     'parent' => '0',
     'count' => 14,
  )),
  'found_rows' => 1,
)

Note that in addition to the term(s) that match your criteria, the function returns one additional array element; found_rows with the total count of terms. This can be more that the terms returned in the array if you have used the limit and/or offset parameters to get partial results. You probably want to remove this element before using the results in a foreach ( $terms as $term ) loop; unset( $terms['found_rows'] ); will do the trick.

I hope that answers your question and gives you a solution for your site. Please update this topic if you have any problems or further questions about this issue.

The new parameters will be available in the next MLA version. I will leave this topic unresolved until the next version goes out. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and for motivating an improvement to the plugin.