[wp-hackers] wp_dropdown_categories and multiple selections

[David Law]

Building an awesome widget :-) which includes wp_dropdown_categories
for one of the options and wanted to add the option to select multiple
categories and looking at
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_dropdown_categories
doesn't appear to be possible.

Trying to build a widget that shows posts with thumbnail and excerpt
that are either most popular, recent, modified, by ID, random or
alphabetical (by title) with the ability to show on all categories or
a subset of categories. Basically a widget for popular, recent, random
posts with thumbnail and excerpt (not seen a widget that covers them
all in one widget).

Have it working how I want except the selection of categories.

Currently can include a single category or exclude a single category
with a selection options using wp_dropdown_categories, but not include
or exclude a set of categories using a drop down selection box. I
don't want to have a widget the user has to find the category IDs and
add them like 3,7,9 as not user friendly. Want a selection box the
user holds down CTRL and ticks the categories they want to
include/exclude.

the code is

<?php wp_dropdown_categories('hierarchical=1&selected='
.$instance['only']. '&orderby=name&show_count=1&name=' .
$this->get_field_name('only') . '&hide_empty=0'); ?><br />
	<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('only');
?>"><?php _e('Only show posts in this category.',
'stallion-wseo-widget'); ?></label>


$instance['only'] is the Category ID

The above gives a drop down select box that one category ID can be
selected from, looking to select more than one.

I'm using

new
WP_Query('cat='.$only.'&orderby='.$poprand.'&order='.$ascdes.'&posts_per_page='
. $num);

For selecting the posts and was trying to use wp_dropdown_categories
to generate the list of categories to include or exclude.

Maybe a better question would have been how to generate a comma
seperated list of categories for the $only variable without the user
typing them out as 3,8,123 since wp_dropdown_categories doesn't have
that as a feature :-)

Any ideas?

David
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