Ok, so after a lot of digging around I came up with code that does exactly what I asked for. However I don’t believe this code to be pretty/efficient/reusable in any way. I’m merely posting it since it executes what was expected. I would appreciate an answer that would point me to the “best practice” way of coding so I could learn from it, so I won’t mark my question as answered for a week or so to wait for some better coding.
This is the result I came to:
<?php
$isOdd = true; // setup boolean to determine parent div id for CSS
$args1 = array(
'orderby' => 'ID',
'order' => 'ASC',
'hierarchical' => true
);
$cats = get_categories( $args1 ); // get all the categories from the database
// loop through the categries
foreach ($cats as $cat) {
$cat_id= $cat->term_id;// setup the cateogory ID
$cat_name= $cat->name;// setup the category name
$parent= $cat->category_parent;// setup the category parent
$cat_child= get_term_children( $cat_id, 'category' ); // outputs a string with child categories from the taxonomy
$has_child=bool; // create a variable that will allow to verify if a category has children
if( empty($cat_child)) { $has_child= false; }
else { $has_child= true; }
if ( $parent == 0 && $has_child == false ) { //is parent && no child -> loop posts
echo "<div class=\"parent-wrap\" id=\"". ( $isOdd ? 'odd' : 'even') . "\">";
echo "<h2>".$cat_name."</h2>";
echo "<div class=\"post-wrap\">";
echo "<ul class=\"post-list\">";
echo "<li class=\"back-button\"><</li>";
// create a custom wordpress query
$args2 = 'cat=" . $cat_id . "&orderby=date&order=DESC&post_per_page=-1';
query_posts( $args2 );
// start the wordpress loop!
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() ); //get post template from content.php
endwhile; endif;
echo "<li class=\"front-button\">></li>";
echo "</ul><!-- .post-list -->";
echo "</div><!-- .post-wrap -->";
echo "</div><!-- .parent-wrap -->";
$isOdd = !$isOdd;
}
elseif ( $parent == 0 && $has_child == true ) { //is parent && has child -> post title
echo "<div class=\"parent-wrap\" id=\"". ( $isOdd ? 'odd' : 'even') . "\">";
echo "<h2>".$cat_name."</h2>";
// loop through the categries IN THE ELSEIF STATEMENT
foreach ($cats as $cat) {
$cat_id_new= $cat->term_id;// setup the new cateogory ID
$cat_name_new= $cat->name;// setup the new category name
$parent_new= $cat->category_parent;// setup the new category parent
$cat_child_new= get_term_children( $cat_id_new, 'category' ); // outputs a string with child categories from the taxonomy
$has_child_new=bool; // create a new variable that will allow to verify if a category has children
if( empty($cat_child_new)) { $has_child_new= false; }
else { $has_child_new= true; }
if ($parent_new != 0 && $has_child_new == false && cat_is_ancestor_of($cat_id, $cat_id_new) ) { //is child -> loop posts
echo "<div class=\"child-wrap\">";
echo "<h3>".$cat_name_new."</h3>";
echo "<div class=\"post-wrap\">";
echo "<ul class=\"post-list\">";
echo "<li class=\"back-button\"><</li>";
// create a custom wordpress query
$args2 = 'cat=" . $cat_id_new . "&orderby=date&order=DESC&post_per_page=-1';
query_posts( $args2 );
// start the wordpress loop!
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post();
get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() ); //get post template from content.php
endwhile;
endif; // done our wordpress loop. Will start again for each category
echo "<li class=\"front-button\">></li>";
echo "</ul><!-- .post-list -->";
echo "</div><!-- .post-wrap -->";
echo "</div><!-- .child-wrap -->";
} // close if ($parent_new != 0...
} // close foreach in elseif
echo "</div><!-- .parent-wrap -->";
$isOdd = !$isOdd;
} // close if ($parent == 0...
} // close the 1st foreach statement ?>
I feel some of the things in this code could be better organized if functions were created and then reused throughout the code and I’m still thinking about replacing query_posts(); with get_posts(); or pre_get_posts();.