simple PHP question

What is the problem with using $category[0]->cat_name as shown in example no. 3?

<?php
$category = get_the_category();
if ( $category[0]->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
?>

Something like this perhaps?

<?php
$category = get_the_category();
if ( $category[0]->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' || 'SOCCER' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
?>

Still not really sure what you’re after, so knowing exactly what you’re trying to produce could be helpful. 🙂

The link to get_the_category may be where you want to spend some time.

The code above is only going to match on the first category assigned to your post – that’s the [0], an index to the category array for the post. And yes, an index of 0 pointing to the first item doesn’t really make sense. It’s just the way it works – not just in PHP, but in many programming languages.

So if the problem is that your posts will (potentially) have many categories, then perhaps you should loop through all of them, which would instead look more like this:

<?php
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if ( $category->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
}
?>

The get_the_category actually returns an array, but rather than looking at only the first item (see, ma, no index!), it’s looping through them (foreach) instead. So if any one of them matches FOOTBALL, it’s going to echo ‘hello world’. This means no matter when FOOTBALL was added, it’ll show.

Before, if SOCCER (or HOCKEY, or any other category) was added, and FOOTBALL was added later, so that it wasn’t the first one, then it wouldn’t match $category[0]. Thus, it wouldn’t work.*

Now, if you want to match multiple conditions, it’s going to get a little more complex.

<?php
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if ( $category->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' || 'HOCKEY' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
}
?>

That’s FOOTBALL or HOCKEY.

<?php
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if ( $category->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' || 'SOCCER' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
}
?>

That’s FOOTBALL or SOCCER.

<?php
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if ( $category->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' || 'HOCKEY' || 'SOCCER' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
}
?>

That’s FOOTBALL or HOCKEY or SOCCER.

<?php
foreach((get_the_category()) as $category) {
if ( $category->cat_name == 'FOOTBALL' && 'HOCKEY' ) {
   echo "hello world";
}
}
?>

That’s FOOTBALL and HOCKEY. Don’t do that – because you’re only looking at one category at a time, so you’ll never get a match.

* So you could also change the index – looking for $category[1] or something. But that just changes your problem. You would then be looking for FOOTBALL in the second category assigned (index 1 is the second item, just as index 0 is the first item). So I don’t think it’s going to help.

Let me know if this does it for you.