Display only parent category in entry meta

I know this is a mild annoyance in its simplicity Esmi, but I have replaced the following in my content.php file:

<?php twentytwelve_entry_meta(); ?>

with:

<span class="meta-category"><?php the_category(', ') ?></span>
<span class="meta-author">by <?php the_author(); ?></span>
<span class="meta-date">on <?php the_time('jS F Y') ?></span>

and that delivers the same output as the above.

Is this the right way to do this and if so how can i only display just the parent category?

For anyone who is trying to achieve this I got it to work.

I removed the:

<?php twentytwelve_entry_meta(); ?>

and replaced it with:

<span class="meta-category"><?php
$category = get_the_category();
if($category[0]){
echo '<a href="'.get_category_link($category[0]->term_id ).'">'.$category[0]->cat_name.'</a>'; } ?></span>
<span class="meta-author">by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></span>
<span class="meta-date">on <?php the_time('jS F Y') ?></span>

This works great. Not sure if this is the right way to do it but I have searched for ages and all the solutions seem to use the if conditional Esmi said NOT to use

I used this page in the codex:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_category

Hi Esmi I have managed to display only the parent category using the method above and my child functions.php now looks like:

function twentytwelve_entry_meta() {
	// Translators: used between list items, there is a space after the comma.

	$category = get_the_category(); if($category[0]){ echo '<a href="'.get_category_link($category[0]->term_id ).'">'.$category[0]->cat_name.'</a>'; }
	// Translators: used between list items, there is a space after the comma.
	$tag_list = get_the_tag_list( '', __( ', ', 'twentytwelve' ) );

	$date = sprintf( '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="%3$s" pubdate>%4$s at %2$s</time></a>',
		esc_url( get_permalink() ),
		esc_attr( get_the_time() ),
		esc_attr( get_the_date( 'c' ) ),
		esc_html( get_the_date() )
	);

	$author = sprintf( '<span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="author">%3$s</a></span>',
		esc_url( get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ) ),
		esc_attr( sprintf( __( 'View all posts by %s', 'twentytwelve' ), get_the_author() ) ),
		get_the_author()
	);

	// Translators: 1 is category, 2 is tag, 3 is the date and 4 is the author's name.
	if ( $tag_list ) {
		$utility_text = __( '%1$s •<span class="by-author"> by %4$s</span>%3$s', 'twentytwelve' );
	} elseif ( $categories_list ) {
		$utility_text = __( '%1$s •<span class="by-author"> by %4$s</span>%3$s', 'twentytwelve' );
	} else {
		$utility_text = __( '%1$s •<span class="by-author"> by %4$s</span>%3$s', 'twentytwelve' );
	}

	printf(
		$utility_text,
		$categories_list,
		$tag_list,
		$date,
		$author
	);
}

Everything works fine but I cannot figure out how to display the date using the format M – A short textual representation of a month.

So my entry meta looks like:

Uncategorized • by James January 29, 2014 at 12:02 am

And I need it to look like:

Uncategorized • by James Jan 29, 2014 at 12:02 am

Any ideas?? or should I just revert back to replacing:

<?php twentytwelve_entry_meta(); ?>

with:

<span class="meta-category"><?php
$category = get_the_category();
if($category[0]){
echo '<a href="'.get_category_link($category[0]->term_id ).'">'.$category[0]->cat_name.'</a>'; } ?></span>
<span class="meta-author">by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></span>
<span class="meta-date">on <?php the_time('jS F Y') ?></span>

in my content.php??

After a bit of sleep found the solution. I inserted the format strings from the content.php snippet above into the functions.php block below:

$date = sprintf( '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="%3$s" pubdate>%4$s at %2$s</time></a>',
		esc_url( get_permalink() ),
		esc_attr( get_the_time('h:i a') ),
		esc_attr( get_the_date( 'c' ) ),
		esc_html( get_the_date('M d') )
	);

Just goes to show if you have a problem and cannot figure it out (I found this horrifically difficult), keep trying, the solution is never far away!