get_terms showing link to category even if all posts are drafts

get_terms() doesn’t have built-in feature that excludes draft posts because it keeps track of only total posts term is attached to. I made a quick search and found this snippet but be warned:

• It affects all get_terms() functions on your site (I excluded admin area)
• There’s a SQL query in foreach loop – it will affect performance
• More terms returned == bigger performance hit
• I do not recommend testing it on live website
• You might get away with it if your traffic is not super high

This is probably the reason why there’s no native support for that – it’s either query in loop or WordPress would need to keep track of both drafts and public posts count which is not perfect either.

SOURCE

This is a very hacky solution and I wouldn’t use it myself. It might also require few modifications.

If you’re willing to try it, add this to functions.php:

// Make sure that we're not in admin area
if( ! is_admin() ) {

    add_filter( 'get_terms', 'hide_draft_terms' );

    function hide_draft_terms( $terms, $taxonomies, $args ) {


        global $wpdb;
        $taxonomy = $taxonomies[0];

        if( ! is_array( $terms ) && count( $terms ) < 1 )
            return $terms;

        $filtered_terms = array();

        foreach ( $terms as $term ) {

            $result = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->posts p JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships rl ON p.ID = rl.object_id WHERE rl.term_taxonomy_id = $term->term_id AND p.post_status="publish" LIMIT 1" );

            if ( intval( $result ) > 0 ) {

                $filtered_terms[] = $term;
            }
        }

        return $filtered_terms;
    }
}