Filter Categories widget to allow custom sorting?

Question

Does a hook exist that would allow one to enhance the widget options for the category widget in order to allow setting the default sort order?

Also, I notice in the codex the options for sort appear to be one of any of these (id, name, slug, count, group) and either ascending or descending. So, Ideally a drop down menu on widget options panel to allow one to set those two parameters (order and orderby) is what I'm looking to do.

Otherwise, I'll just filter wp_list_categories and add the order option to my theme options, but it seems more logical to put it on the widget control itself.

PS: I can't seem to ever get done with enhancements to WordPress categories. I hope there's more work done on core category options in the future. Especially with the emergence of site theming and soloing of late. I know WP is ahead of most publishing systems in terms of its early support for categories, but it seems they've left lots on the table after that.

Answer 1

Hi @Scott B:

From /wp-includes/widgets.php for the WP_Category_Widget class we have the following code (line 438 in WordPress v3.0.4):

$cat_args = array('orderby' => 'name', 'show_count' => $c, 'hierarchical' => $h);
if ( $d ) {
  $cat_args['show_option_none'] = __('Select Category');

wp_dropdown_categories(
  apply_filters('widget_categories_dropdown_args',$cat_args)
);

From that I would surmise the hook 'widget_categories_dropdown_args' should allow you to set an 'orderby' parameter?

P.S. Have you ever considered using (something like) PhpStorm? As you ask lots of "How can I get access to..." kind of questions you'd probably find yourself an order of magnitude more productive if you had a tool like PhpStorm that could quickly get you these answers. Just a thought...