Categories and Product Categories blocks not functioning

[rakshitwesley]

Quick summary

Both the "Categories" and "Product Categories" blocks are not functioning correctly when added to a site; they display "No categories."

Steps to reproduce

1. Verify that the site has post categories or product categories.
2. On a new page, add either of these two blocks.

What you expected to happen

Expected relevant categories to be displayed

What actually happened

It displays "No categories"

Impact

Most (> 50%)

Available workarounds?

Yes, easy to implement

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

Simple, Atomic

Logs or notes

Tested with both classic and site editor themes, and the results were the same.

Workaround: Use categories list block.

[rickmgithub]

📌 REPRODUCTION RESULTS

• Tested on Atomic – Replicated

📌 FINDINGS/SCREENSHOTS/VIDEO

I can replicate this on a site with products and categories.

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/assets/13706336/989b6036-063b-4990-a231-cc8e93b350b8

📌 ACTIONS

Triaged

[alaczek]

Can you provide a bit more details on how this was tested - what page or template these blocks were inserted into?

I was not able to replicate this issue. Here's what I did (on an Atomic site):

• I added the Categories block to a Home template, inside a Query loop - the categories were displayed correctly.
• I added the Categories block to a single post content - the categories were displayed correctly.
• I added the Product Categories block to a Single Product template - the product categories were displayed correctly. When I added the Product Categories block to a single post, it did not work, but I believe these two blocks need the context of the loop (blog, store) to display the right content, so adding Product Categories will only work in Store related templates (Single Product, Product Catalog, etc.) but not in other templates or blog posts / pages. Similarly, it makes sense to me Categories block works when inserted into a post, but not a page, because pages don't have categories.

To display all categories/ product categories outside of the loop context Categories List and Product Categories List blocks should be used instead.

Please let me know if this makes sense or if I missed something.

[mrfoxtalbot]

What you say makes sense @alaczek, those blocks can only be used insider a query loop block. We could question why users are allowed to add them elsewhere but that's a different story.

On a new page, add either of these two blocks.

Looking at this part of the "how to replicate list", it sounds like this was a misunderstanding.

I think we can go ahead and close this one.

[alaczek]

Ok, thanks for following up!