WordPress + Twig (Timber) - Showing current category in category dropdown

Question

I currently have a category dropdown filter set-up for my blog pages. This works to switch between the category pages, however, I am having difficulty getting the dropdown box to show the active category.

Here is what I have in my archive.php file

$context['categories'] = Timber::get_terms('category');

And here's the function that shows the current category dropdown.

<form id="category-select" class="category-dropdown" action="{{site.url}}" method="get"> 
  <select name="cat" id="cat" class="cat-menu" onchange="return this.form.submit()">
     <option value="-1">Select a category</option>
        {% for cat in categories %}
          <option class="level-0" value="{{cat.id}}">{{cat.name}}</option>
        {% endfor %}
     <option value="0">View All</option>
  </select>
<noscript><input type="submit" value="View" /></noscript></form>

Does anyone have any guidance on how to this properly?

Answer 1

You have to pass the current category to the view. If your post only have one category you can use the following snippet,

controller.php

<?php
    $post = Timber::get_post();
    $post_categories = $post->terms('category');

    $context['selected_category'] = reset($post_categories); //post can be attached to one or more categories
    $context['categories'] = Timber::get_terms('category');

view.twig

<form id="category-select" class="category-dropdown" action="{{site.url}}" method="get"> 
  <select name="cat" id="cat" class="cat-menu" onchange="return this.form.submit()">
     <option value="-1">Select a category</option>
        {% for cat in categories %}
          <option class="level-0" value="{{cat.id}}"{% if selected_category is defined and selected_category.id = cat.id %} selected{% endif %}>{{cat.name}}</option>
        {% endfor %}
     <option value="0">View All</option>
  </select>
<noscript><input type="submit" value="View" /></noscript></form>

Answer 2

Thanks to @DarkBee I was able to figure this out. Didn't use exactly the code provided, but it pointed me in the right direction.

archive.php

I found get_query_var( 'cat' ) would get the current category pages ID.

$post = Timber::get_post();
$post_categories = $post->terms('category');
$context['selected_category'] = get_query_var( 'cat' ); 
$context['categories'] = Timber::get_terms('category');

archive.twig

<form id="category-select" class="category-dropdown" action="{{site.url}}" method="get">
<select name="cat" id="cat" class="cat-menu" onchange="return this.form.submit()">
    {% for cat in categories %}
      <option class="level-0" value="{{cat.id}}"
                {% if selected_category == cat.id %}
                selected
                {% endif %}>{{cat.name}}</option>
    {% endfor %}
 <option value="0">View All</option>
</select>
<noscript><input type="submit" value="View" /></noscript></form>