Display Currently Selected Category Inside Safecracker Form

Question

How do I display the currently selected category for the channel entry inside a Safecracker form?

I tried:

{categories}
    {if checked}
       {category_name}
    {/if}
{/categories}

I also tried {if checked != ''}, and the same with {selected} instead of {checked}.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Have you tried something like this:

<select name="my_field_name" id="categories" >
    <option value="option_value" {if my_field_name == "option_value"}selected="selected"{/if}>option_name</option>
</select>

So you break it out a little more then can through in conditional checking on each option value.

Answer 2

I got it to work by using an embedded template:

The main template:

{exp:safecracker
    channel='mychannel'
    url_title='{segment_3}'
    return='site/success'
}

    {!-- Safecracker Fields --}

    {embed='site/entry_category' entry_id='{entry_id}'}

    {!-- More Safecracker Fields --}

{/exp:safecracker}

The embedded template (site/entry_category):

{exp:channel:entries
    channel='mychannel'
    entry_id='{embed:entry_id}'
    disable='member_data|pagination|custom_fields'
    limit='1'
}
    {categories backspace='2'}{category_name}, {/categories}
{/exp:channel:entries}

This works because embedded templates are parsed after module tags (like Safecracker). So EE loops through the Safecracker tag and performs all the functions inside it, then, when it's done, it loads the embedded template and processes the tags inside that. So the two don't interfere with each other and I get my entry's selected categories.

Answer 3

The {checked} variable is either empty or contains checked="checked". to check it in a conditional you have to check that it is not empty, and because it contains quotes the conditional needs to be in single quotes. The following should work:

{categories}
  {if '{checked}' != ''}
     {category_name} 
  {/if}
{/categories}

Answer 4

I just encountered a similar situation where I'm in a safecracker tag pair and want to output the selected categories of the entry. GDmac's comment above solved it perfectly, thanks GDmac (I had tried {if {selected}} to no avail.)