Title: Post Category shortcode
Last modified: December 7, 2017

---

# Post Category shortcode

 *  [shemakeswebsites](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shemakeswebsites/)
 * (@shemakeswebsites)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-category-shortcode/)
 * Hello, I’ve been trying to figure this out for over an hour now and I keep hitting
   a brick wall.
 * I would like to show the current categories of a single post within a shortcode.
   Is this possible? I was able to display the publish date with a shortcode and
   figured this would do doable. But with every method I’ve tried, the response 
   on the from end simply says: array
 * This is the latest. Any ideas on this? Thank you.
 *     ```
       function shortcode_post_category () {
       return get_the_category();
       }
       add_shortcode( 'post_category', 'shortcode_post_category' ); 
       ```
   

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [tilia45](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tilia45/)
 * (@tilia45)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-category-shortcode/#post-9760492)
 * Hi there,
 * You’ll find some helpful information in the function reference:
 * [https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_the_category/](https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_the_category/)
 * One important thing to know about `get_the_category()` is it returns an array
   of objects. So to display the category names in a post you’ll need to loop through
   that array. Here’s an example:
 *     ```
       function shortcode_post_category () {
       	$html = '';
       	$categories = get_the_category();
       	foreach( $categories as $category ){
       		$html .= '<span>' . $category->name . ' </span>';
       	}
       	return $html;
       }
       add_shortcode( 'post_category', 'shortcode_post_category' );
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [shemakeswebsites](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shemakeswebsites/)
 * (@shemakeswebsites)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-category-shortcode/#post-9762099)
 * Thank you, thank you so much. I don’t know how long that would have taken me 
   to figure out!
 * I see that the categories have no links. Should they be links to the category
   archives?
 *  [tilia45](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tilia45/)
 * (@tilia45)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-category-shortcode/#post-9762403)
 * Yes, you can have links too. You can modify the shortcode function to include
   links to category archives, or there’s a readymade function that does most of
   the work for you. `get_the_category_list()`
 * [https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_the_category_list/](https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_the_category_list/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Post Category shortcode’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [shortcode](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/shortcode/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [tilia45](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tilia45/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-category-shortcode/#post-9762403)
 * Status: not resolved

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