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Show a default text if there's no post to show in a WordPress Category

I know I’ll get hate for this but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why nothing shows when there’s no post to show in a category!
I’m trying to show the user No items to show when there’s no post in a specific category menu with the code below but it’s not showing anything and there’s no error.

<?php 
    $the_query = new WP_Query( array(
    'category_name' => $category_name,
    'orderby'     => 'post_date',
    'order'       => 'DESC',
    'post_type'   => 'post',
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'posts_per_page' => 10,
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => true,
    )); 
?>
<div class="category">
    <?php if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : ?>
    <?php while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); ?>
    <div class="category__details">
        <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><h4><?php the_title(); ?></h4></a>
    </div>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
    <?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
    <?php else : ?>
        <p><?php __('No items to show'); ?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>
</div>

PS: The code works and shows the posts when there’s 1 or more post to show.

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. 0

    The function __() doesn’t echo, it returns. You need to either echo the result, or use the echoing variant _e()

    <p><?php echo __('No items to show'); ?></p>

    or

    <p><?php _e('No items to show'); ?></p>
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  2. 0

    It seems like you are missing the echo statement in your else block for displaying the "No items to show" message. Also, you need to use esc_html__ to properly handle translations and output escaping. Here’s the corrected code:

    <?php 
$the_query = new WP_Query( array(
    'category_name'      => $category_name,
    'orderby'            => 'post_date',
    'order'              => 'DESC',
    'post_type'          => 'post',
    'post_status'        => 'publish',
    'posts_per_page'     => 10,
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => true,
)); 
?>

<div class="category">
    <?php if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : ?>
        <?php while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); ?>
            <div class="category__details">
                <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><h4><?php the_title(); ?></h4></a>
            </div>
        <?php endwhile; ?>
        <?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
    <?php else : ?>
        <p><?php echo esc_html__('No items to show', 'your-text-domain'); ?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>
</div>

    Make sure to replace ‘your-text-domain’ with the actual text domain used in your theme or plugin for localization. Also, confirm that your translation files are set up correctly. The esc_html__ function is used to translate and escape the text for safe output.

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