Title: Variable on query_posts isn't working Last modified: August 30, 2016 --- # Variable on query_posts isn't working * Resolved [Famke__](https://wordpress.org/support/users/famke_/) * (@famke_) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/) * Hey guys, * I’m working on a little project which requires me to do something based on the category name of a post. The whole thing is working exactly as it should… but when I look at the site, I get an error message: `Notice: Undefined variable: cat_name`. Note that I do get the results I need, but there still is the message. * If anyone knows what I’m doing wrong, that would be great. * This is the code: * ``` '; print_r($content); echo ''; ?> ``` Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) * [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/) * (@stephencottontail) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496297) * How are you defining `$cat_name`? What is the output of `var_dump( $cat_name )`? * Thread Starter [Famke__](https://wordpress.org/support/users/famke_/) * (@famke_) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496400) * Actually, I thought I defined `$cat_name` in the first line of the code: figured the string of `$cat_name` would now be the category name I gave it. Apparently that’s not true, the output of var_dump gives me ‘null’. * I initially wrote this code with a post_id instead of category_name, but I’m making this for someone who needs to be able to make changes. Therefore, I need category_name rather than post_id. With post_id it worked like this, no errors whatsoever: * ``` '; print_r($zoekenNaar); echo ''; } ?> ``` * I have tried just changing it like that, adding `$category_name = 'zoekennaar'`, but it doesn’t work. * (I’ve added brackets to the foreach loop as you can see, forget that in the first place, and added print_r $zoekenNaar instead of $content now, which is what should be happening). * ADDED: * I created a new post to see what would happen. My code as it is now shows the most recent post, so `$cat_name` indeed doesn’t work. Figured most of you already know, but I’m not the only newbie so it might be useful for someone 🙂 * [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/) * (@stephencottontail) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496403) * As you’ve seen, you need to pass a post ID as the second argument to `get_post_field()` and nothing else will work. * One way to get the IDs would be to use [`get_posts()`](https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts): * ` $cat_name ) ); ?>` * `$posts` would then be an array of objects and you could iterate over the array to get the post content. * What exactly are you trying to do? * Thread Starter [Famke__](https://wordpress.org/support/users/famke_/) * (@famke_) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496417) * Thank you so much for the quick responds and help! * The get_posts you send, is that a line of code I put in instead of these lines? * ``` query_posts('category_name=zoekennaar' . $cat_name); $content = get_post_field('post_content', $cat_name); ``` * To be honest, I don’t have much an idea of what I’m doing. I’m totally new to this and someone explained this to me, so I thought I’d give it a shot. * First of, my website needs to be editable by my boss, without her having to dig into PHP files. * I’m basically trying to generate a list from a post. This list offers the users four options. The user can click one of those options, and another list of options will apear. * Every list is a new post with a new category name. As said above, my boss needs to be able to add to or take things away from the list, without having to go into php. * [stephencottontail](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stephencottontail/) * (@stephencottontail) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496459) * Yeah. You’d have to define $cat_name beforehand, probably by whatever method you were using before. You’d then use something like `foreach()` to iterate over the array of posts returned by `get_posts()`: * ``` $cat_name ) ); foreach( $posts as $post ) { $content = get_post_field( 'post_content', $post->ID ); $content = explode( '|', $content ); foreach ( $content as &$zoekenNaar ) { $zoekenNaar = explode( ':', $zoekenNaar); echo '
';
             print_r( $zoekenNaar );
             echo '
'; } } ?> ``` * Thread Starter [Famke__](https://wordpress.org/support/users/famke_/) * (@famke_) * [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496469) * I copypasted your code and then decided to replace $cat_name with the actual category_name, and that worked. This is exactly what I was trying to do in the first place, so thanks! 🙂 Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) The topic ‘Variable on query_posts isn't working’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [category_name](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/category_name/) * [query_posts](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query_posts/) * [variable](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/variable/) * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 6 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [Famke__](https://wordpress.org/support/users/famke_/) * Last activity: [10 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/variable-on-query_posts-isnt-working/#post-6496469) * Status: resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics