List categories assigned to a post

Question

I want to output the different categories assigned to a post. Let'say for example that a post has three categories:

• Downloads
• Games
• Video

Previously I have used <?php echo get_the_category_list(); ?> But this wraps the <a> in a <span> instead of wrapping the <span> in a* <a>...

I want to list the categories like this:

<a href="the_URL_of_the_category_downloads">
    <span class="the_name_of_the_category_downloads">the_name_of_the_category_downloads</span>
</a>

<a href="the_URL_of_the_category_games">
    <span class="the_name_of_the_category_downloads">the_name_of_the_category_games</span>
</a>

<a href="the_URL_of_the_category_videos">
    <span class="the_name_of_the_category_downloads">the_name_of_the_category_videos</span>
</a>

I am not sure how I can get this to work with php as I have very limited knowledge of PHP in general.

Answer 1

You can use get_the_category( ) instead.

Example:

$categories = get_the_category();
foreach( $categories as $category) {
    $name = $category->name;
    $category_link = get_category_link( $category->term_id );

    echo "<a href='$category_link'>
            <span class=" . esc_attr( $name) . "></span>
         </a>";
}

Answer 2

In the above 'answer', the last line which prints the category name is not actually doing so.

It should look like this:

$categories = get_the_category();
foreach( $categories as $category) {
    $name = $category->name;
    $category_link = get_category_link( $category->term_id );

    echo "<a href='$category_link'>
            <span class=" . esc_attr( $name) . ">" . esc_attr( $name) . "</span>
         </a>";
}