Get category fixed in dropdown browse categories

Question

I tried to get categories directly from phpmyadmin, but i can't. then i tried to create this php scrip in public_html

include "wp-includes/category-template.php";

$args = array(
    'hide_empty' => 0,
    'pad_counts' => true
);
$categories = get_categories( $args );
foreach($categories as $category) {

    if($category->count == 0) {
        echo $category->name."<br />";
    } else {
        // do nothing
    }

}
?>

but it's return Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_categories() in /mnt/env/*****/development/public_html/test.php on line 9

Answer 1

Is there a specific reason you're trying to do this outside of WordPress the normal way? If there is, you could do include('wp-load.php') to access WordPress functions.

But that would only be if you have to access WordPress externally. Normally your code would either go into your theme's functions.php file, or you would add your code to a custom plugin.