add bypass filter to remove category dropdown on post table

[davidmosterd]

Much like #30254. Only with categories there is no function that handles showing the dropdown. This patch adds that function along with the filter to simply bypass showing the dropdown and prevent any additional SQL or code to run. This is useful for situations where you disable the categories column in the post/list table, but do not wish to remove the use of categories.

[davidmosterd]

First patch

[davidmosterd]

I have added a patch. I figured categories are bound to posts and the function should be in the WP_Posts_List_Table class and not in the WP_List_Table class.

[swissspidy]

The new categories_dropdown() method needs some docs love as per ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/best-practices/inline-documentation-standards/php/, but otherwise it looks good.

[swissspidy]

Marking the "good-first-bug" as claimed

[davidmosterd]

Comments

[davidmosterd]

Thanks for pointing that out. Hope I did the comments better now. If not, can you please help me out what to improve?

[swissspidy]

Thanks for the updated patch and sorry for my late reply!

I'll update the version numbers and perhaps slightly change the wording to be more similar to the one in WP_List_Table::months_dropdown(). After that it's good to go in my opinion!

[DrewAPicture]

@swissspidy While you're at it can you add an @access tag to the method and make the check against the filter more strict? I'm not a huge fan of the semi-truthy or semi-falsey kinds of boolean filters, better to be explicit.

[swissspidy]

In 36152.3.diff​:

• Change the version number to 4.6.0
• Add the @access tag
• Make filter more explicit
• Adjust wording

Good to go in my opinion.

[swissspidy]

In 37856:

Posts list table: Add a filter to disable the categories dropdown.

This allows one to short-circuit its output before any queries are run, similar to how it was done for the months dropdown in [31438].

Props davidmosterd for initial patch.
Fixes #36152.