Variable not working in WP_Query

Question

I have used this technique before and cannot work out why this time it is not working.

'news_category' is a custom taxonomy of my custom post type 'News'.

I am getting the taxonomy of the current post (which is custom post type 'news') using get_the_term_list, replacing the spaces with '-' and using the variable in my query.

If I echo the query it gives me the exact string I am expecting - and if I manually enter this string into the query, it works, but the variable doesnt.

$cats     = get_the_term_list( $post->ID, 'news_category' );
$cat      = str_replace( ' ', '-', $cats );
$category = strtolower( $cat ); 

echo $category;

$args = array(
    'post_type'       => 'news',
    'news_categories' => $category,
    'post__not_in'    => array( $post->ID )
);

$sidebar_category = new WP_Query( $args );

Answer 1

You have to use array like this:

array(
      'post_type' =>'news',
      'category_name' => $category,  //use category slug (NOT name).
      'post__not_in'=> array($post->ID)
     );

For more reference please visit this link

Answer 2

The variable is not working because get_the_term_list returns a string of HTML links, whereas your $args array requires slugs. I'm not sure if you can pass an array of slugs using your current method or not. You can certainly pass an array of slugs using a tax_query array.

Incidentally, using your current method, you should be setting the tax name to 'news_category', not 'news_categories', but this is moot.