Single.php back button to parent category

Question

I want to add a back button that goes to the parent category of the actual single post that the user is viewing. How can I do that?

<h2 class="link"><a href="#">Return</a></h2>

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use get_the_category() and return the first result as in the example. Technically you could have several parent categories so you need to deal with this separately or expect that the first element of the array is always the right parent category.

Answer 2

global $post;
$cats=get_the_category($post->ID);
    foreach($cats as $cat){
/*check for category having parent or not except category id=1 which is wordpress default category (Uncategorized)*/
        if($cat->category_parent == 0 && $cat->term_id != 1){
            echo '<h2 class="link"><a href="'.get_category_link($cat->term_id ).'">Return</a></h2>';
        }
        break;
    }

This code gives output:

<h2 class="link"><a href="(Link to first category which not have any parent category)">Return</a></h2>

Important Link: get_the_category