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Can "empty" categories be hidden from output?

I am outputting a set as a list of categories like so:

<?php
 perch_categories(array(
  'set'=>'apptags-'.PerchSystem::get_var('language'),
  'template'=>'tags.html'
 ));
?>

Employing their slugs the categories link to a detail page.
Some of them have been set up prematurely, which means you will get a detail page with nothing on it.
Is it possible to output only categories, that have actually been assigned to at least one item?
Nils Mielke

Nils Mielke 3 points

  • 7 years ago
Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

7 years ago

That's a more complex question than it sounds :) The short answer is no - I think the best you can do is add a field to the category to show it or not, and then filter on that field.
Nils Mielke

Nils Mielke 3 points

7 years ago

Okay thanks, Drew.
Will do as you suggested.
Stoo Collins

Stoo Collins 0 points

6 years ago

Hi all,

I came across this post as I'm looking to hide empty category titles as well. So, seeing Drew's suggestion on adding a field to the category and filtering on it, I've hit a brick wall....

I edited the template category.html and added the following to give me a checkbox when adding a category:

<perch:category id="enabled" type="checkbox" label="Category Enabled" />

This shows a checkbox that I can turn on and off and updates the category record fine.

I then added a filter to my perch_categories array as follows:

<?php perch_categories(array (
                'set'   =>  'brands',
                'template'  =>  'category.html',
                'filter'    =>  'enabled',
                'match' => 'eq',
                'value' => '1',
            )); ?>

Unfortunately, the filter then hides all the categories, which to me says that the filter isn't being matched. So I thought I'd check the database table perch2_categories for my 'enabled' column to check the value I'm filtering on as I thought it may be 'true' or '1' etc. But looking at the contents of the table, my enabled field is in catDynamicFields, and even though it says "enabled":"1" in here, it's obviously not using it.

Am I missing something obvious? Any pointers would be grand :)

Thanks!