Question

Here is the dilemma I have, my theme options passes the custom taxonomy variable as an ID number, not the slug name. So instead of passing “news” it passses “4”.

I have this hard code that works:

$wp_query = new WP_Query(array('slidecat' => 'extra', 'showposts'=>$slides));

But this code only works with the slug. So if i replace the ‘extra’ with $slider_category which is the variable my select field in the theme options passes, the code doesn’t work.

Answer 1

If you have the taxonomy ID, then it’s easier to just query the database directly to get to the slug:

function get_term_by_taxonomy_id($term_taxonomy_id) {
    global $wpdb;
    $taxonomy = $wpdb->get_row( $wpdb->prepare( 
        "SELECT * FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy wta
            INNER JOIN $wpdb->terms wt ON (wta.term_id = wt.term_id)
            WHERE wta.term_taxonomy_id = %d", $term_taxonomy_id 
    ) );

    return $taxonomy;
}

$cat = get_term_by_taxonomy_id($slider_category);
// at this point you should check if $cat is null (in case of an error)
$wp_query = new WP_Query(array('slidecat' => $cat->slug, 'showposts'=>$slides));

Of course the slug can be applied to different taxonomies, for example there could by a category and a post_tag with a slug named "hello". So it depends on how slidecat is implemented and which taxonomies are supported.