List custom taxonomy terms

Question

I am trying to display all of the terms for a custom taxonomy(characters), the taxonomy is related to a custom post type(books).

What I would like to do is display all of the terms for characters, so say for instance I have two books, and I add three characters to each book, I would like all six characters to display.

I would only like to get the names, not links, or in list form, if I could get a set of objects or an array that would be preferable.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I believe what you are looking for is the get_terms function. I found it looking at the code for wp_tag_cloud, here is the source of the function. This little snippet should get you what you are wanting.

$terms = get_terms("characters");

if ( empty( $tags ) || is_wp_error( $tags ) )
  return;

foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
  echo $term->name;
}

Answer 2

You can add a function to your functions.php and pass 'characters' as an argument (or the slug for your custom taxonomy) to show a comma separated list of all your terms.

function show_all_terms($taxonomy){
    $taxonomy_terms = get_terms($taxonomy);
    foreach($taxonomy_terms as $term){
        $terms[] = $term->name;
    }
    if(!empty($terms)) {
        echo join(", ", $terms);
    }
    else{
        echo "No ".$taxonomy."associated with this ".get_post_type();
    }
}

Now you can call this function in your templates like this:

show_all_terms('character'); 
// you can replace 'character' with the slug of any custom taxonomy as well.