Question

I’m trying to add some settings to my WordPress options page that depend on the number of categories. I created this function to use inside the main array, but it only returns the first array, leaving out the other 3 I have. A print_r will show all of them, so I can’t seem to figure this out.

function listSections() {
  $categories = get_categories();
    foreach($categories as $category) {
      return array (
        "name" => $category->cat_name . " Label Color",
        "desc" => "Select a label color.",
        "id" => $shortname."_label_color" . $category->cat_ID,
        "type" => "select",
        "options" => $color_options,
        "std" => ""
      );
    }
}

Answer 1

The function can only return once. It cannot return multiple things in a loop. After it reaches the first return, it exits the function completely. If you want to return an array of arrays, you should use the following.

function listSections() {
    $results = array();
    $categories = get_categories();

    foreach($categories as $category) {
        $results[] = array (
        "name" => $category->cat_name . " Label Color",
        "desc" => "Select a label color.",
        "id" => $shortname."_label_color" . $category->cat_ID,
        "type" => "select",
        "options" => $color_options,
        "std" => ""
        );
    }

    return $results;
}

using the syntax $result[] = xyz; will append xyz to the end of the array. You can loop through the returned array, with some code like

$results = listSections();

$count = count($results);
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {
    $category = $results[$i];
    echo $category["name"];
    etc......
}