Categories Fields
Categories fields allow you to relate categories to the parent element.
Settings #
Categories fields have the following settings:
- Source – The category group you want to relate categories from.
- Target Locale – Which locale categories should be related with (this setting only appears if you’re running Craft Pro with more than one site locale)
- Limit – The maximum number of categories that can be related with the field at once. (Default is no limit.) Note that this does include parent categories, if your category group has multiple levels.
- Selection Label – The label that should be used on the field’s selection button.
The Field #
Categories fields list all of the currently selected categories, with a button to select new ones:
Clicking the “Add a category” button will bring up a modal window where you can find and select additional categories:
When you select a nested category, all of the ancestors leading up to that category will also automatically be selected. Likewise, when you deselect a category from within the main field input, any of its descendants will also become deselected.
Templating #
If you have an element with a Categories field in your template, you can access its selected categories using your Category field’s handle:
{% set categories = entry.categoriesFieldHandle %}
That will give you an element query, prepped to output all of the selected categories for the given field. In other words, the line above is really just a shortcut for this:
{% set categories = craft.categories({
relatedTo: { sourceElement: entry, field: "categoriesFieldHandle" },
limit: null
}) %}
(See Relations for more info on the relatedTo param.)
Examples #
To check if your Categories field has any selected tags, you can use the length filter:
{% if entry.categoriesFieldHandle|length %}
...
{% endif %}
To loop through the selected categories:
{% nav category in entry.categoriesFieldHandle.all() %}
...
{% endnav %}
Rather than typing “entry.categoriesFieldHandle” every time, you can call it once and set it to another variable:
{% set categories = entry.categoriesFieldHandle %}
{% if categories|length %}
<h3>Some great categories</h3>
{% nav category in categories %}
...
{% endnav %}
{% endif %}
You can add parameters to the ElementCriteriaModel object as well:
{% set categories = entry.categoriesFieldHandle.orderBy('name') %}
If your Categories field is only meant to have a single category selected, remember that calling your Categories field will still give you the same ElementCriteriaModel, not the selected category. To get the first (and only) tag selected, use one():
{% set category = entry.myCategoriesField.one() %}
{% if category %}
...
{% endif %}