[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #35495: Allow `get_terms()` to return all terms, make `$taxonomy` parameter optional

[WordPress Trac]

#35495: Allow `get_terms()` to return all terms, make `$taxonomy` parameter
optional
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 Reporter:  flixos90                  |       Owner:  boonebgorges
     Type:  enhancement               |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal                    |   Milestone:  4.5
Component:  Taxonomy                  |     Version:  4.4
 Severity:  normal                    |  Resolution:  fixed
 Keywords:  has-patch has-unit-tests  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by boonebgorges):

 In [changeset:"45888" 45888]:
 {{{
 #!CommitTicketReference repository="" revision="45888"
 Taxonomy: Ensure consistency of `hide_empty` in term queries when
 `taxonomy` is excluded.

 When querying for terms in hierarchical categories using
 `hide_empty=true`,
 results have historically included parent terms which are themselves
 unattached to any objects (are "empty") but which have non-empty
 descendent
 terms. Because this process involves walking the descendant tree, we avoid
 it
 when we detect that the queried taxonomies are not hierarchical. (This
 behavior was introduced in [5525].)

 When the `taxonomy` parameter of `get_terms()` was made optional - see
 #35495,
 [36614] - it affected the mechanism for avoiding unneccessary tree walks,
 since there may not be any explicitly declared taxonomies to run through
 `is_taxonomy_hierarchical()`. As a result, term queries excluding
 `taxonomy`
 did not check descendants, and empty parents with non-empty children were
 not
 included in `hide_empty` results.

 We correct the behavior by crawling term descendants when the `taxonomy`
 argument is absent, which means that we're querying for terms in all
 taxonomies.

 Props smerriman.
 Fixes #37728.
 }}}

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/35495#comment:17>
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