WP Widget Categories How to add a description of the number of articles to the widget?

Question

I need to create custom categories widget for WordPress. It should look something like this. I found in this topic how to create custom categories but I can't understand how to add word - "articles" and remove brackets what we have in standard widget

code of my-category

<?php
class My_Widget_Categories extends WP_Widget {

    function My_Widget_Categories() {
        $widget_ops = array( 'classname' => 'widget_categories', 'description' => __( "My list or dropdown of categories" ) );
        $this->__construct('my_categories', __('My Categories'), $widget_ops);
    }


    //  FRONTEND
    function widget( $args, $instance ) {
        extract( $args );

        $title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty( $instance['title'] ) ? __( 'Categories' ) : $instance['title']);
        $c = $instance['count'] ? '1' : '0';
        $h = $instance['hierarchical'] ? '1' : '0';
        $d = $instance['dropdown'] ? '1' : '0';

        echo $before_widget;
        if ( $title )
            echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;

        $cat_args = array(
            'orderby' => 'name',
            'show_count' => $c,
            'hierarchical' => $h
        );

        if ( $d ) {
            $cat_args['show_option_none'] = __('Select Category');
            wp_dropdown_categories(apply_filters('widget_categories_dropdown_args', $cat_args));
            ?>

            <script>
                var dropdown = document.getElementById("cat");
                function onCatChange() {
                    if ( dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value > 0 ) {
                        location.href = "<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/?cat="+dropdown.options[dropdown.selectedIndex].value;
                    }
                }
                dropdown.onchange = onCatChange;
            </script>

            <?php
        } else {
            ?>
            <ul>
                <?php
                $cat_args['title_li'] = '';
                wp_list_categories(apply_filters('widget_categories_args', $cat_args));
                ?>
            </ul>
            <?php
        }

        echo $after_widget;
    }

    /// Saving of settings
    function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {
        $instance = $old_instance;
        $instance['title'] = strip_tags($new_instance['title']);
        $instance['count'] = $new_instance['count'] ? 1 : 0;
        $instance['hierarchical'] = $new_instance['hierarchical'] ? 1 : 0;
        $instance['dropdown'] = $new_instance['dropdown'] ? 1 : 0;

        return $instance;
    }

    /// Backend of widget
    function form( $instance ) {
        //Defaults
        $instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $instance, array( 'title' => '') );
        $title = esc_attr( $instance['title'] );
        $count = isset($instance['count']) ? (bool) $instance['count'] :false;
        $hierarchical = isset( $instance['hierarchical'] ) ? (bool) $instance['hierarchical'] : false;
        $dropdown = isset( $instance['dropdown'] ) ? (bool) $instance['dropdown'] : false;
        ?>
        <p><label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>"><?php _e( 'Title:' ); ?></label>
            <input class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('title'); ?>" type="text" value="<?php echo $title; ?>" /></p>

        <p><input type="checkbox" class="checkbox" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('dropdown'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('dropdown'); ?>"<?php checked( $dropdown ); ?> />
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('dropdown'); ?>"><?php _e( 'Show as dropdown' ); ?></label><br />

            <input type="checkbox" class="checkbox" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('count'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('count'); ?>"<?php checked( $count ); ?> />
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('count'); ?>"><?php _e( 'Show post counts' ); ?></label><br />

            <input type="checkbox" class="checkbox" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('hierarchical'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('hierarchical'); ?>"<?php checked( $hierarchical ); ?> />
            <label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('hierarchical'); ?>"><?php _e( 'Show hierarchy' ); ?></label></p>
        <?php
    }


}

Is it difficult to implement it in the form of a widget so that later it will be possible to expand the functionality ?

Answer 1

get_terms returns a set of data, so in this data you would also find the total count of each term.

So you could do something like:

$terms = get_terms( [
  'taxonomy' => 'post_tag', // or the name of your taxonomy
  'hide_empty' => false,
]);

when you would loop the $terms variable you will get an array with the following information:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  object(WP_Term) (11) {
    ["term_id"]=>  //int
    ["name"]=>   //string 
    ["slug"]=>  //string 
    ["term_group"]=>  //int
    ["term_taxonomy_id"]=> //int
    ["taxonomy"]=>   //string
    ["description"]=>    //string
    ["parent"]=> //int
    ["count"]=>  // int 
    ["filter"]=> //string
    ["meta"]=> array(0) { // presumably this would be some returned meta-data?
    }
  }
}

so in your loop, you could do something like

echo '<ul>';

foreach($terms as $term){ 
 echo "<li>{$term->name} <span class='category-count'>{$term->count}</span></li>"
}
echo '</ul>;

Creating a widget is documented on the WordPress developers page: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/functionality/widgets/

But if the document isn't clear, you could have a look at this tutorial on how to create a widget. Doing this will give you the tools to make your own widget: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-create-custom-widget-in-wordpress