Menu Quick Search: Allow searching for empty taxonomy terms

[birgire]

In the Menu admin page /wp-admin/nav-menus.php we can view empty taxonomy terms, but we can't search for empty ones.

This was reported here: ​https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/302406/how-to-show-empity-category-in-admin-menus-search

I had a look and found the same behavior in the Customizer.

This seems like a bug.

Screenshots:

See screenshots below for categories (same applies for other taxonomies).

Fixes:

The default of get_terms() is to hide empty taxonomy terms.

To fix this here, we need to add:

'hide_empty' => false,

to the input of get_terms() in _wp_ajax_menu_quick_search():

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/4.9.8/src/wp-admin/includes/nav-menu.php#L109

and to the input of get_terms() in WP_Customize_Nav_Menus::search_available_items_query:

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/4.9.8/src/wp-includes/class-wp-customize-nav-menus.php#L352

[birgire]

Category setup for the screenshots

[audrasjb]

Hi, thanks for the ticket,

I agree, we should list empty categories. Here is a first patch (simply adds empty terms to the search tools).

But, I'm wondering about adding post count as well…

Cheers,

Jb

[audrasjb]

Here is the settings used to reproduce the issue

[audrasjb]

Fixed in menu screen

[audrasjb]

Fixed in customizer screen

[audrasjb]

Add empty categories to Menu quick search tool in both Menu screen and Customizer screen.

[birgire]

Thank you for the patch @audrasjb

45298-2.diff​ adds unit tests for both cases (i.e. for the Admin Menu page and the Customizer).

It also adjusts the test in WP_Customize_Nav_Menus::search_available_items_query that assumed that the Uncategorized category would not show up in the quick search results.

[audrasjb]

Hi,

With 5.4 Beta 3 approaching and the Beta period reserved for bugs introduced during the cycle, this is being moved to 5.5.

[audrasjb]

Menus: Allow searching for empty taxonomy terms.

[audrasjb]

Patch refreshed against trunk :-)

[johnbillion]

In 47747:

Menus: Allow empty taxonomy terms to be surfaced when searching for items.

This brings the behaviour inline with that of browsing terms or using the All Items tab, which correctly shows empty terms.

Props birgire, audrasjb

Fixes #45298