Question

I have this piece of code

<ul>
<?php 

$categories = get_categories('include=9,4,5,6,7,8,3&hide_empty=0'); 

foreach ($categories as $category) {
    $option = '<li class="mainop"><a href="#">'.$category->name.'</a>';

    $args = array( 'category' => $category->cat_ID );
    $myposts = get_posts( $args );

    if ( count($myposts) > 0) {
        $option .= '<ul>';

        foreach( $myposts as $post ) {  
            setup_postdata($post); 
            $option .= '<li><a href=" '.the_permalink().' "> '.the_title().' </a></li>';
        }   

        $option .= '</ul>';
    }

    $option .= '</li>';
    echo $option;
}
?>
</ul>

It is supposed to draw all categories in a WordPress blog and for each category the titles of the child posts.

However when running it is returning the following (html code):

<ul>
  <li class="mainop"><a href="#">Category</a></li>
  http://URL/?p=13Page13http://URL/?p=11Page 11http://URL/?p=9Page 9
  <li class="mainop"><a href="#">Category</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="  "> </a></li>
      <li><a href="  "> </a></li>
      <li><a href="  "> </a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li class="mainop"><a href="#">Category</a></li>
  <li class="mainop"><a href="#">Category</a></li>
</ul>

Do you have any idea why the titlea and the URLs are put in first place at the output and not where they are supposed to be?

Thank you

Answer 1

the_permalink() and the_title() print out the link and title – they don’t return the values as strings. So when you call the functions, you are printing out the values into the page, and concatenating empty strings in their place to $option.