Get the the top-level parent of a custom taxonomy term

How would I get the top-level parent of a given term?

I am using wp_get_object_terms to get taxonomy terms on posts, but instead of showing all tagged terms, I only want to show tagged terms’ top-level parents.

So if these are my selected terms, I only want to show Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

x BREAKFAST
   x Cereal
   x Eggs
  LUNCH
     Hamburger
   x Pizza
  DINNER
     Fish
        Bass
      x Salmon
        Trout
     Lasagna

How can I do this?

Answers:

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Method 1

Thanks to Ivaylo for this code, which was based on Bainternet’s answer.

The first function below, get_term_top_most_parent, accepts a term and taxonomy and returns the the term’s top-level parent (or the term itself, if it’s parentless); the second function (get_top_parents) works in the loop, and, given a taxonomy, returns an HTML list of the top-level parents of a post’s terms.

// Determine the top-most parent of a term
function get_term_top_most_parent( $term, $taxonomy ) {
    // Start from the current term
    $parent  = get_term( $term, $taxonomy );
    // Climb up the hierarchy until we reach a term with parent = '0'
    while ( $parent->parent != '0' ) {
        $term_id = $parent->parent;
        $parent  = get_term( $term_id, $taxonomy);
    }
    return $parent;
}

Once you have the function above, you can loop over the results returned by wp_get_object_terms and display each term’s top parent:

function get_top_parents( $taxonomy ) {
    // get terms for current post
    $terms = wp_get_object_terms( get_the_ID(), $taxonomy );
    $top_parent_terms = array();

    foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
        //get top level parent
        $top_parent = get_term_top_most_parent( $term, $taxonomy );
        //check if you have it in your array to only add it once
        if ( !in_array( $top_parent, $top_parent_terms ) ) {
            $top_parent_terms[] = $top_parent;
        }
    }

    // build output (the HTML is up to you)
    $output = '<ul>';
    foreach ( $top_parent_terms as $term ) {
          //Add every term
          $output .= '<li><a href="'. get_term_link( $term ) . '" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">' . $term->name . '</a></li>';
    }
    $output .= '</ul>';

    return $output;
}

Method 2

Since 3.1.0, get_ancestors() is available. It returns an array of ancestors from lowest to highest in the hierarchy.

Method 3

Here is a simple function that will get you the top most parent term of any given term:

function get_term_top_most_parent( $term_id, $taxonomy ) {
    $parent  = get_term_by( 'id', $term_id, $taxonomy );
    while ( $parent->parent != 0 ){
        $parent  = get_term_by( 'id', $parent->parent, $taxonomy );
    }
    return $parent;
}

Once you have this function you can just loop over the results returned by wp_get_object_terms:

$terms =  wp_get_object_terms( $post->ID, 'taxonomy' );
$top_parent_terms = array();
foreach ( $terms as $term ) {

    //Get top level parent
    $top_parent = get_term_top_most_parent( $term->ID, 'taxomony' );

    //Check if you have it in your array to only add it once
    if ( !in_array( $top_parent->ID, $top_parent_terms ) ) {
        $top_parent_terms[] = $top_parent;
    }
}

Method 4

/**
 * Get top level term
 */
function get_top_level_term($term,$taxonomy){
    if($term->parent==0) return $term;
    $parent = get_term( $term->parent,$taxonomy);
    return get_top_level_term( $parent , $taxonomy );
}

Method 5

I had the same problem and I solved easily. Check this out:

Define $taxonomy. It can be the slug of the taxonomy you want to get the data.
After doing this, you can simply do this:

<?php
    $postterms = wp_get_post_terms($post->ID, $taxonomy);   // get post terms
    $parentId = $postterms[0]->parent;                      // get parent term ID
    $parentObj = get_term_by('id', $parentId, $taxonomy);   // get parent object 
?>

Now you got something like this:

object(stdClass)#98 (11) {
  ["term_id"]=>
  int(3)
  ["name"]=>
  string(8) "Esportes"
  ["slug"]=>
  string(8) "esportes"
  ["term_group"]=>
  int(0)
  ["term_taxonomy_id"]=>
  int(3)
  ["taxonomy"]=>
  string(17) "noticiaseditorias"
  ["description"]=>
  string(0) ""
  ["parent"]=>
  int(0)
  ["count"]=>
  int(4)
  ["object_id"]=>
  int(123)
  ["filter"]=>
  string(3) "raw"
}

And you can use $parentObj to get slug, name, id, whatever. Just by using $parentObj->slug or $parentObj->name as exemple.

Method 6

Easiest way:

$rootId = end( get_ancestors( $term_id, 'my_taxonomy' ) );
$root = get_term( $rootId, 'my_taxonomy' );
echo $root->name;

Method 7

Maybe this helps: get_ancestors( $object_id, $object_type );

codex.wordpress.org

Method 8

Try this!

function get_term_top_most_parent( $term_id, $taxonomy ) {
    $ancestors = get_ancestors( $term_id, $taxonomy );

    if(!empty($ancestors)){
        $parentID = end( $ancestors );
    }else{
        $parentID = $term_id;
    }
    return $parentID;
}

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0