Customed shortcode shows same value to the whole post query loop (WordPress Archive page)

Question

I created a shortcode using the code below and placed the shortcode in the post query loop, e.g. archive page. At the result, all the items in the query loop show 'bread' regardless to what category they are, e.g. cake and brownie also show 'bread'.

function display_class_category() {
    $target_categories = array( 'bread', 'cake', 'brownie' );
    if ( has_category( $target_categories ) ) {
        $categories = get_the_category( get_the_ID() );
        foreach ( $categories as $category ) {
            if ( in_array( $category->slug, $target_categories ) ) {
                $category_link = get_category_link( $category->term_id );
                return '<div class="link-cat"> <a href="' . esc_url( $category_link ) . '">' . esc_html( $category->name ) . '</a> </div>';
            }
        }
    }
    return '';
}
add_shortcode( 'class_category', 'display_class_category' );

Does your every posts have "bread" category? If so, then thats the issue with your code. You are looping the category but the moment it matches with your target_categories array, the loop will break due to the "return". it only match once and return the category. Instead you should concat all the categories and then only return the output. — Afif Zafri
– Afif Zafri, Commented Oct 14 at 2:18
Nope. Every item belongs to only 1 category. Thanks for asking. — FUFY
– FUFY, Commented Oct 14 at 3:18
Can you show us your archive loop? Is there a reason you are using a shortcode here? Is this in a builder (Elementor, Avada, etc.)? — disinfor
– disinfor, Commented Oct 14 at 20:17
@disinfor - Not sure that you mean to show the design page or the result page (I can capture it if you'd prefer). But if you mean the code, I only have this one for the archive in my theme's functions.php. - The reason doing this is that I have special categories wanted to highlight. When a user clicks any page that has post list, e.g. homepage, archive page, blog page, or search page, the posts with speical categories should be highlighted. With help from chatgpt, I got this code to put in functions.php and add the shortcode to designated place, e.g. below the title. — FUFY
– FUFY, Commented Oct 15 at 8:56
By the way I'm using regular wordpress editor, no special building tools — FUFY
– FUFY, Commented Oct 15 at 8:56

FUFY · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-19 07:13:06Z

Update:

I tried the code on a new clean environment with clean wordpresss 6.8.3 installed and the result was exactly the same.
Tried on 3 different themes: twenty twenty-four, twenty twenty-five, and astra, all gave the same result.
Tried using ACF + ACF views (the latter generated shortcode to put anywhere you'd like) and the result was still the same.

All above displayed only 'bread' instead of actual category ('bread', 'cake', or 'brownie') where each item belonged. So I assumed this should be something internal of wordpress about shortcode displaying in query loop.

Anyway, I tried another way not using shortcode and this time it works:

function filter_archive_categories( $terms, $post_id, $taxonomy ) {
    if ( $taxonomy !== 'category' || ( ! is_archive() && ! is_home() && ! is_front_page() && ! is_search() ) ) {
        return $terms;
    }
    $allowed_category_slugs = array( 'bread', 'cake', 'brownie' );
    $filtered_terms = array();
    if ( ! empty( $terms ) && ! is_wp_error( $terms ) ) {
        foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
            if ( in_array( $term->slug, $allowed_category_slugs, true ) ) {
                $filtered_terms[] = $term;
            }
        }
    }
    return $filtered_terms;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_terms', 'filter_archive_categories', 10, 3 );

This time the result displays correctly. Thanks everyone so far. Hope this helps for those who may have the same problem.

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