get_terms() doesn’t return empty terms even though hide_empty is false

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I can’t manage to make get_terms() to return the empty terms and I’ve tried it in a number of ways.

Here’s the code: 

$terms = get_terms('device',array('hide_empty' => 0));
foreach($terms as $term) {
        if($term->parent == 0) {
            if($i++ != 0) echo '</optgroup>'; echo '<optgroup label="'.$term->name.'">';
            $id = $term->term_id;
            $args = array("child_of"=>$id);
            $this_term = get_terms('device',$args);
            foreach($this_term as $the_term) { 
                $term_name = str_replace($term->name,'',$the_term->name);
                echo '<option value="'.$the_term->term_id.'">'.$the_term->name.'</option>';
            }
        }
    }

I’ve tried all the possible ways:

$terms = get_terms('device',array('hide_empty' => false))
$terms = get_terms('device',array('hide_empty' => 0))
$terms = get_terms('device',array('hide_empty=false'))
$terms = get_terms('device',array('hide_empty=0'))

Also tried the last two ways without array. Nothing seems to be working. It returns all the terms that have posts, but no empty one.

2 Answers
2

You use the hide_empty argument for $terms, but not for $this_term inside your loop.

Also, with the way you’re generating your select, it would be a lot more efficient to just query top-level terms for the main loop:

$terms = get_terms( 'device', array( 'hide_empty' => false, 'parent' => 0 ) );

And then drop if($term->parent == 0) {... inside your loop.

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