Add category attribute to custom recent post shortcode

Question

I have a recent post shortcode to display a custom post. Everything works fine so far. However, I would like to add a category attribute so I can specify which category to display.

My working code is as follows:

function my_recent_posts_shortcode2( $atts ) {
    extract( shortcode_atts( array( 'limit' => 7, 'type' => 'g1_event'), $atts ) );

    global $paged;
    $q = new WP_Query(  array ( 
        'posts_per_page' => $limit, 
        'post_type' => $type, 
        "orderby" => 'meta_value',
        "meta_key" => 'evt_start_date',
        "order" => 'ASC',
        'paged' => $paged 
    ) );

    $list = '<ul class="recent-events">';

    while ( $q->have_posts() ) {
        $q->the_post();

        //for this post, get custom field "event_date" which should be in yyyy-mm-dd format and display as to month, day
        //2011-02-22 will display as February 22
        $evt_start_date = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'evt_start_date', true);
        $evt_start_date = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'evt_start_date', true);
        if ($evt_start_date) {
            echo 'The event date is '. date('F j', strtotime($evt_start_date));
        }

        $list .= '<li>' . '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '">' . get_the_title() . '</a>' . '<br>'. get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'evt_start_date', true ) . ' @ ' . get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'evt_location', true ) . '</li>';
    }

    wp_reset_query();

    return $list . '</ul>';
}
add_shortcode( 'recent-events', 'my_recent_posts_shortcode2' );

Right now I place the shortcode using: [recent-events][/recent-events]

I would like to be able to specify the category ID: [recent-events cat="62"][/recent-events]

Hope this is clear, thank you.

Answer 1

Add the category parameter:

shortcode_atts( array(
    'limit' => 7,
    'type'  => 'g1_event',
    'category' => '',
), $atts);

In your WP_Query add:

'category_name' = $category

For your shortcode use:

[recent-events category="slugName"]