Category attribute not working in custom shortcode

Question

I have the following function written, the issue is when I set the category in my shortcode it ignores it and shows all posts from the custom post type. So it only sort of works.

/*--------------------------------------------------------------
## Resources Shortcode
--------------------------------------------------------------*/
function resources_query( $atts ) {
    extract(shortcode_atts(array(
        'category'      => '',
        'per_page'  => -1,
        'orderby' => 'date',
        'order' => 'ASC'
    ), $atts));

    $tax_query = array(
        'taxonomy' => 'resources_categories',
        'field'    => 'slug',
        'terms'    => array( esc_attr($category) ),
        'operator' => 'IN',
    );
    $args = array(
        'post_type'     => 'resources',
        'post_status'       => 'publish',
        'posts_per_page' => $per_page,
        'orderby' => $orderby,
        'order' => $order,
        'tax_query'   => $tax_query
    );
    $resources_query = new WP_Query( $args );
    if ( $resources_query->have_posts() ) :
        $html_out = '<div class="fg-row row flex-row">';
        while ( $resources_query->have_posts() ) :
            $resources_query->the_post();
            $title = get_the_title();
            $content = get_the_excerpt();
            $pdf = get_field( "download_pdf" );

            // Do stuff with each post here
            $html_out .= '<div class="fg-col col-xs-12 col-md-4 fg-text-dark"><section class="icon-box-v3 light-box text-left fg-text-dark"><i class="icon-box-v3-icons ff-font-et-line icon-document fg-text-dark ffb-icon-1"></i>';
            $html_out .= '<h3 class="icon-box-v3-title fg-text-dark ffb-title-2">' . $title . '</h3><p class="icon-box-v3-title-paragraph fg-text-dark ffb-description-3">' . $content . '</p>';

            if( $pdf ):
                $html_out .= '<a href="' . $pdf . '" class="ffb-block-button-1-0 ffb-btn ffb-btn-v1 ffb-btn-link btn-base-brd-slide btn-slide btn-base-md btn-w-auto fg-text-dark ffb-button1-1 btn-light-box" target="_blank"><span class="btn-text">Download PDF</span></a>';
            endif;

            $html_out .= '</section></div>';
        endwhile;
        $html_out .= '</div>';

    else : // No results
        $html_out = "No Resources Found.";
    endif;
    wp_reset_query();
    return $html_out;
}

add_shortcode( 'show_resources', 'resources_query' );

Here's what my shortcode actually looks like [show_resources category="post-surgery-information" per_page="-1"]. I am not sure why it would ignore it and show all posts. I looked at other Stack articles to help me with setting this up.

Answer 1

So I see two things that could contribute to the problem:

1. I really doubt you'll need to esc_attr for the query.
2. This is a tricky one, but tax_query needs to be an array of arrays

Based on this, I believe this will work better for you:

$tax_query = array(
    'taxonomy' => 'resources_categories',
    'field'    => 'slug',
    'terms'    => array( $category ), // <--------
    'operator' => 'IN',
);
$args = array(
    'post_type'     => 'resources',
    'post_status'       => 'publish',
    'posts_per_page' => $per_page,
    'orderby' => $orderby,
    'order' => $order,
    'tax_query'   => array($tax_query) // <--------
);

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Your $tax_query needs to be an array of tax query argument arrays:

$tax_query = array(
    array(
        'taxonomy' => 'resources_categories',
        'field'    => 'slug',
        'terms'    => array( esc_attr($category) ),
        'operator' => 'IN'
    )
);

See https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Taxonomy_Parameters for more information.