Get Category Archive Template Name Dynamically

Question

I'm making a category archive template that works for all my categories. I need to dynamically set the 'category' parameter of WP_Query inside of this template to make it work.

How do I dynamically get a string of the current category page name to feed into the WP_Query? All the methods I've seen presupposed that I know my ID or slug. As this is an archive page, most WP functions will not return the archive page title but rather a post title.

The best option I've see is: $current_category = single_cat_title("", false);

But it still displays the title on my category.php page - maybe I'm doing something wrong with this?

Answer 1

This is the only option I have found:

$current_category = single_cat_title("", false);

Answer 2

To answer your question, get_queried_object and get_queried_object_id will give you all the info you need about most types of pages.

However- if you're creating a new query in the template to change some query parameters, then you should instead be using pre_get_posts to alter the main query before it's run. Then you can just run the regular loop in your template.

For example, changing posts_per_page on a category archive:

function wpd_category_query( $query ) {
    if ( $query->is_category() && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'posts_per_page', 15 );
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts','wpd_category_query' );