Add item limit to categories block

[ajlende]

What problem does this address?

On a site with many categories, the list can get quite long and there is no way to limit how many are shown.

What is your proposed solution?

The category block should be able to limit the number of items shown similarly to how the latest posts block can.

[kathrynwp]

Hi @ajlende - thanks for the suggestion for the Category block.

Which Block

First I'd like to confirm, are you referring to the Categories List block, which lists all categories that have posts on a site, and which is equivalent to the old Categories widget?

Or are you referring to the Post Categories (aka Category block), which is used inside a Query Loop block to display the categories in which a specific post belongs? Screenshot:

Implementation

Could you also please share a little more about how you envision this working? For example, if you're referring to the Categories List block, let's say a user limited the Categories List block to 3 categories (when there are perhaps 10 categories in total), how would those three be chosen? Did you imagine that they'd be just be the first three in alphabetical order, or did you have something else in mind? If you'd like to share your specific use case that might also be helpful. Thanks!

[ajlende]

@kathrynwp sorry for not responding sooner. We wanted the categories list block to list the top six categories in our sidebar.

@getdave and I worked on #42424 which adds controls similar to the Latest Posts block to sort by count and limit the number of items.

[kathrynwp]

Thanks, @ajlende. When you say "top six categories" are you referring to the categories with the most published posts, or some other way of ranking the categories?

[getdave]

Thanks, @ajlende. When you say "top six categories" are you referring to the categories with the most published posts, or some other way of ranking the categories?

He's refering to the count of the posts the given category taxonomy term is assigned to. If you check #42424 you can see it working and hopefully we have a good description.