Taxonomy List Based On Post ID

These two snippets list the categories of a specific WordPress post as links to their archive pages when all you have is the post’s ID. That’s useful outside the main loop, for example in a related-posts block or a custom query where you need the categories of another post.

Both expect a variable $main_post_id that holds the ID of the post you’re interested in. Set it before the code runs, for example to get_the_ID() inside a loop or to a fixed number, and add the code to the theme template where the list should appear.

Method 1: loop through the terms

<?php $terms = get_the_terms( $main_post_id, 'category' ); ?>
<?php foreach( $terms as $term ): ?>
<a href="<?php echo get_term_link($term->slug, 'category'); ?>" class="catg-title"><?php echo $term->name; ?></a>
<?php endforeach; ?>

• get_the_terms() returns the post’s terms in the category taxonomy as an array of term objects.
• get_term_link() builds the URL of each category archive, and $term->name is the link text.
• Every link gets the class catg-title, so you can style it or change the markup freely.

If the post has no terms, get_the_terms() returns false and the foreach throws a PHP warning. Wrap the loop in a check when that can happen, for example with a custom taxonomy.

Method 2: one line with get_the_term_list()

If a comma-separated list of links is all you need, get_the_term_list() does the whole job. Its arguments are the post ID, the taxonomy, the text before the list (empty here) and the separator between items (a comma and a space).

<?php echo get_the_term_list( $main_post_id, 'category', '', ', ' ); ?>

To list tags or a custom taxonomy instead of categories, replace category with that taxonomy’s name, such as post_tag. In method 1, change it in both get_the_terms() and get_term_link(). For names without links, see printing custom taxonomy terms as a comma-separated list.

Related articles

• term functions that work for custom post types: when the_category() returns nothing
• linking to a post’s first category archive: when you need just one term link