Conditional Query of Custom Post Type and custom taxonomy

Question

I am working on a project that has

• a custom post type called 'Experience Statement'
• Custom Taxonomy attached to that post type called 'Expertise'
• 6 different terms for the custom taxonomy: Coastal, inland, marine, waterway, ship, telecommunications

So, I have created this loop, that works great and I have created 6 different template pages with this loop in each (I just change the term for each) <?php $page = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; query_posts("post_type=experiencestatements&expertise=coastal&showposts=10&paged=$page"); if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>

So, this is working fine, but I have to create a different template page: i.e. page-exp-stmt-coastal.php for each term. I would like to have only one template page with conditional statements for each term instead of 6 (and counting) template pages. Having 6+ different pages means I have to go in and change each one every time the client wants a tweak.

In summary, I need some help crafting a conditional tag that changes the loop depending on the taxonomy term. AND, I have no idea how to do that. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Larry

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this, one method is to use get_the_terms.

The logic would be to run the loop and customize the output based on the terms for that taxonomy ( this will probably not work out of the box).

//do a custom query here if needed
 if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

 $terms = get_the_terms($post->ID, 'Expertise');
//this will return and array of terms for your Expertise taxonomy.

   foreach ( $terms as $term ) {

     if($term->name == 'marine') {

       // do custom stuff here 

     }elseif($term->name == 'waterway') {

       // do custom stuff here
     }elseif .... 

After you comment it seems like you want no custom content per term, aka the same content for all 6 terms , this can be done with just a query loop, again there are several ways to do this.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

$args = array(
    'tax_query' => array(
        'relation' => 'AND',
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'Expertise',
            'field' => 'slug',
            'terms' => array( 'marine', 'waterway', 'you_other_terms_here' ),
        ),

    )
)
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

Another way is to use my original suggestion and just do a match for all get_the_terms in the array you want using in_array , it could be something like ( continued from original code above), but there are several way to do this in php:

foreach ( $terms as $term ) {

if (in_array('marine', '$term')) && (in_array('waterway', '$term')) && etc..
   //do stuff
}

Answer 2

couldn't you create a template called

taxonomy-Expertise.php

as per: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy#Custom_Taxonomies_display

seems like you shouldn't have to adjust the loop at all as WP will already be using the appropriate query for each term in the taxonomy. but you could still test for the term name here (it'd be in the query vars) and trigger different display code as warranted.