wp taxonomy list

Overview

List every registered taxonomy — built-in (category, post_tag) and custom (product_cat, genre, etc.). Use this to discover valid taxonomy slugs before managing terms.

What It Does

wp taxonomy list reads from get_taxonomies() and output each registered taxonomy with its label, slug, whether it's public, and which post types it applies to.

Syntax

wp taxonomy list [OPTIONS]

Arguments & Options

Flag	Description
--fields=FIELDS	Fields: name, label, public, hierarchical, object_type
--format=FORMAT	table, json, csv, yaml

Basic Usage

List all taxonomies

wp taxonomy list

Output:

+-------------+------------+--------+--------------+
| name        | label      | public | hierarchical |
+-------------+------------+--------+--------------+
| category    | Categories | 1      | 1            |
| post_tag    | Tags       | 1      | 0            |
| product_cat | Categories | 1      | 1            |
+-------------+------------+--------+--------------+

Get taxonomy slugs only

wp taxonomy list --field=name

Include object types

wp taxonomy list --fields=name,label,object_type --format=table

Real-World Scenarios

Verify a custom taxonomy exists before using it

if wp taxonomy list --field=name | grep -q "^genre$"; then
  wp term create genre "Science Fiction" --slug=sci-fi
else
  echo "Taxonomy 'genre' does not exist"
fi

Quick Reference

wp taxonomy list                          # All taxonomies
wp taxonomy list --field=name             # Slugs only
wp taxonomy list --format=json            # JSON output

Next Steps

• wp taxonomy get — inspect a single taxonomy.
• wp term list — list terms within a taxonomy.