List categories with custom code

Question

Right now, and taking from http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_categories we can use the following code to list categories in a wordpress page:

<?php 
    $args = array(
    'show_option_all'    => '',
    'orderby'            => 'name',
    'order'              => 'ASC',
    'style'              => 'list',
    'show_count'         => 0,
    'hide_empty'         => 1,
    'use_desc_for_title' => 1,
    'child_of'           => 0,
    'feed'               => '',
    'feed_type'          => '',
    'feed_image'         => '',
    'exclude'            => '',
    'exclude_tree'       => '',
    'include'            => '',
    'hierarchical'       => 1,
    'title_li'           => __( 'Categories' ),
    'show_option_none'   => __( 'No categories' ),
    'number'             => null,
    'echo'               => 1,
    'depth'              => 0,
    'current_category'   => 0,
    'pad_counts'         => 0,
    'taxonomy'           => 'category',
    'walker'             => null
    );
    wp_list_categories( $args ); 
?>

And change its options as we like. However this will always echo a <li><a>something</a></li> tag. I'd like to change this code, e.g. I want to make the <a> tags outside <li>. How can I achieve something like this?

Answer 1

<ul>
<?php
$categories = get_categories();
foreach($categories as $category)
{
?>
<li><a href="<?php echo get_category_link($category->cat_id);?>">$category->name</a></li>
<?php
}

?>
</ul>

Just simply change the content inside the foreach loop to output how ever your desire. If you are doing this in a number of places drop it into a function and echo the function from your functions file.

Drop this into your functions.php

<?php  
  function outputcategories()
    {
?>
       <ul>
        <?php
        $categories = get_categories();
        foreach($categories as $category)
        {
        ?>
        <li><a href="<?php echo get_category_link($category->id);?>">$category->name</a></li>
        <?php
        }

        ?>
        </ul>
<?php
    }

then to use it run the below

<?php echo outputcategories();  ?>