events/list-event-categories returns every event category with the number of events in it, empty categories included.
It exists for the count. Everything else about event categories is ordinary WordPress taxonomy work.
At a glance
| Ability | events/list-event-categories |
| Toolset | The Events Calendar — toolset/events-calendar |
| Group | The Events Calendar › Event Categories |
| Requires | The Events Calendar, active on the site |
| Capability | manage_options |
| Safety | Read-only — changes nothing |
| Repeatable | Idempotent — running it twice leaves the same result |
| Ships in | AcrossAI Abilities Manager 0.0.34 and later |
How it works
Event categories are a standard WordPress taxonomy. Creating, renaming, nesting and deleting them is already covered by the generic taxonomy abilities, and duplicating that here would mean two ways to do the same job with different behaviour in the corners.
What the generic abilities cannot tell you is how many events are in each category. The term count WordPress keeps includes only published posts of the counted types and is maintained lazily; on an event site it routinely disagrees with reality once drafts, private events and pending submissions are in play.
So this counts events directly. Empty categories are included rather than filtered out, because “which categories is nobody using” is one of the two questions people ask here.
Input
This ability takes no input.
What comes back
| Name | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
categories | array | One entry per category: term ID, name, slug, parent, description and event count. |
count | integer | How many categories exist. |
success | boolean | Whether the call completed. |
message | string | A one-line summary of what happened, suitable for showing a human. |
error_code | string | Present only on failure — a stable machine-readable reason, such as a missing field, a wrong field type or an unmet confirmation. |
Example
Ask your assistant:
Which event categories are we actually using?
It resolves to one call:
{
"ability": "events/list-event-categories",
"parameters": {}
}Worth knowing
- Use the generic taxonomy abilities to create, rename or delete categories.
- Empty categories are listed with a count of zero rather than omitted.
- The taxonomy is hierarchical. The parent field is there for building the tree.
Related abilities
- Set Event Categories — assign them to an event
- List Events — filter events by one of these
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