get top parents in wordpress

gistfile1.aw

<?php
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', $term_id, $taxonomy);
    }
    return $parent;
}
// so once you have this function you can just loop over the results returned by wp_get_object_terms

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

// return the results

foreach ($top_parent_terms as $term) {
 	$r = '<a href="' . get_term_link($term->slug, $taxonomy) . '">' . $term->name . '</a>';
/* This line causes "Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in /home/eric/public_html/wp-content/plugins/epi-plugin/epi-plugin.php on line 675" */

}
	return $r;

} // End of top parents