how does get_term_by know which term to return when the same term appears twice in a hierarchical taxonomy?

Question

This is from the codex.

<?php get_term_by( $field, $value, $taxonomy, $output, $filter ) ?>

Suppose I have a taxonomy system as follows;

taxonomy: "healthy foods" and it's a hierarchical taxonomy and your hierarchy goes exactly like this;

healthy foods
    fruits
        red ones
        green ones
    veggies
        red ones
        green ones

and you use the get_term_by function as follows;

get_term_by("name","red ones","healthy foods")

Do you get the veggies or the fruits?

Answer 1

get_term_by() just returns the first matching term, 'first' meaning some internal order in MySQL.

If having multiple terms with the same name matters in your case, don't rely on get_term_by() alone.

Answer 2

You get the first one WP comes to in the database query. To get both terms that match use:

get_terms( [ 'taxonomy'=>'healthy foods', 'name'=>'red ones', 'hide_empty' => 0 ] )

See: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_terms/