Get object terms with no children?

Question

Others have asked how to only get parent terms, but I need to get the deepest term for the post of a specific taxonomy.

Is there a way I can only get terms where the number of children = 0?

Answer 1

I have written this function some time ago, it may be a bit sloppy but it does it's job:

function get_low_level_term( $taxonomy ) {
$term = null;

if( is_single() ) {
    global $post;
    $terms = get_the_terms( $post->ID, $taxonomy );

    if( count( $terms ) == 1 ) {
        foreach( $terms as $t ) {
            $term = $t;
        }
    }
    else {
        foreach( $terms as $t ) {
            if( $t->parent ) {
                $term = $t;
            }
        }
        if( !$term ) {
            $count = 0;
            foreach( $terms as $t ) {
                $term = $count == 0 ? $t : $term;
                $count ++;
            }
        }
    }
}

return $term;
}

Answer 2

There is another way to pass args to get terms. This worked for me.

$args = array(
            "hide_empty" => false,
            "taxonomy" => "category_taxonomy",
            "childless" => true
        );
        $low_level_categories = get_terms($args);