Display Primary Category (Yoast's WordPress SEO)

primary_category.php

<?php 
/**
 * Get the Yoast primary category from its post meta value, and displays it, with HTML markup.
 * If there is no primary category set, it displays the first assigned category.
 * 
 * @param boolean $useCatLink Whether to link the category, if it exists
 * @return void
 */
function yourtheme_display_yoast_primary_category( $useCatLink = true ) {

	// Retrieves post categories
	$category = get_the_category();

	// If post has a category assigned.
	if ( $category ) {
		$category_display = '';
		$category_link = '';
		
		// Get post's 'Primary' category from post meta
		$yoast_primary_key = get_post_meta( get_the_id(), '_yoast_wpseo_primary_category', TRUE );

		if ( !empty($yoast_primary_key) )
		{
			$term = get_term( $yoast_primary_key );

			if ( is_wp_error($term) ) { 
				// Default to first category (not Yoast) if an error is returned
				$category_display = $category[0]->name;
				$category_link = get_category_link( $category[0]->term_id );
			} else { 
				// Yoast's Primary category
				$category_display = $term->name;
				$category_link = get_category_link( $term->term_id );
			}
		}
		else {
			// Default, display the first category in WP's list of assigned categories
			$category_display = $category[0]->name;
			$category_link = get_category_link( $category[0]->term_id );
		}

		// Display category
		if ( !empty($category_display) ){
			if ( $useCatLink == true && !empty($category_link) ){
				echo '<span class="post-category">';
				echo '<a href="', esc_url($category_link), '">', esc_html_e($category_display), '</a>';
				echo '</span>';
			} else {
				echo '<span class="post-category">', esc_html_e($category_display), '</span>';
			}
		}
	}
}

?>

Saved my tush. Thanks for this!

Thank you :)

I'm surprised Yoast doesn't reorder the array and just make the primary the first item in the array. It seems to take when using categories in post URLs but not when doing a standard get_the_category.

Thanks for this gist!

how can i display a parent category of the “Primary” Category??

Thank you!
Great job!

It's helped me out.
Thank you :)

Great Job, more useful!

thank you!

Thanks for this!

Thanks for the head start! I converted it to a helper function that just returns the term object. Now I can use it with any taxonomy and do and build the markup however I want with the data.
https://gist.github.com/JiveDig/5d1518f370b1605ae9c753f564b20b7f

Thanks, man.

This worked great! Thank you much!

Thank mate!

Life saver.

Thanks for this, with the help of this i was able to create a shortcode which can display the Primary Category used by Yoast wherever you want

https://gist.github.com/geekysihag/97938e6e8e318d0ab59b437f44b8b6f1

Tks mate!! :)

thanks a lot for that, I've just changed the
htmlspecialchars to htmlspecialchars_decode as it was not treating a "&" properly!

thanks a lot for that, I've just changed the
htmlspecialchars to htmlspecialchars_decode as it was not treating a "&" properly!

You absolute legend. I was hoping someone would have the answer to that problem!

Just updated the script with a new an improved version for 2022, since this has been pretty popular and it needed a few adjustments. The primary meta key is now retrieved via the post meta value, which is a little more futureproof. It's now a function with a param for showing the link or not. And both the URL and category name are now escaped with the WP functions esc_url and esc_html_e (displays symbols like "&" properly as discussed in the comments here).

Thanks so much for this, getting me close to where I need to be. It's displaying the Primary Category (from the dropdown settings) correctly but not displaying the link...any ideas what could be this issue?

got it, I had to add $useCatLink = "true"; and worked great (thought only needed that to NOT display the link).

Thanks again, such a huge help!