Get paged category link programmatically

Question

I want to get the link to a category (specified by id) but with a paged value (e.g. page 3 of category id 4).

I was looking into get_category_link()^Codex, but it only returns the link to the first page of the category.

Is there a build-in function that I can make use of to get the link to a category page that reflects the blogs URL-layout settings (?paged=3/ /page/3)?

Edit: I added my solution as an answer.

Answer 1

This the code I have so far which looks like it does the job, I still wonder if there is a API function for the job:

/**
 * @param (int) $category_id
 * @param (int) $pagenum
 * @return string
 */
function get_category_paged_link($category_id, $pagenum)
{
    global $wp_rewrite;

    $link = get_category_link($category_id);

    if ($wp_rewrite->using_permalinks() || $wp_rewrite->using_index_permalinks())
    {
        $link = sprintf
        (
            '%s/%s/%d/',
            rtrim($link, '/'),
            $wp_rewrite->pagination_base,
            $pagenum
        );
    }
    else
    {
        if (false === strpos($link, '?'))
            $link .= '?';
        else
            $link .= '&';
        $link .= sprintf('paged=%d', $pagenum);
    }

    return $link;
}

Answer 2

I've found that get_term_link()(or similarly get_category_link) will output a pretty URL depending on where it's called, when called too early(i was testing inside the theme functions file initially) it will just output a regular query var style URL, eg. http://example.com/?cat=5, where as when called later on(i tested in the theme's footer), you'll get a permalink style URL, eg. http://example.com/category/nicename.

Clearly those functions rely on something that gets included later in the load sequence(at least after the theme's functions file), i can't pinpoint why they behave this way, but that's my initial observation, which also means my previous comment regarding there not being an internal function was incorrect.