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I think my post title is not clear and it’s really not possible to tell every thing in just a simple post title . Ok, I am taking about:
1. WordPress
2. Category menu in wordpress using wp_list_categories()

If you make a wordpress menu using category listing in wordpress then the html code will be like this

WordPress menu as category list(click image to see full)

In the above picture , you see same thing twice , firt one
1. when we are not in any category page(category archive page)
2. when we are in a category archive page , the active category list gets a extra class name “current-cat”
So my post is about when we are browsing any single post how can we mark the the category as “current-cat” that post belongs to so that the active category list can be styled using css.

So to do that I got a plugin (please check here) but i am not happy as the plugin put active class for anchor tag… Please check the plugin code.

function show_active_category($text) {
	global $post;
	if( is_single() ) {
		$categories = wp_get_post_categories($post->ID);
		foreach( $categories as $catid ) {
			$cat = get_category($catid);
			if(preg_match('#>' . $cat->name . '</a>#', $text)) {
				$text = str_replace('>' . $cat->name . '</a>', ' class="active_category">' . $cat->name . '</a>', $text);
			}
		}
	}
	return $text;
}
add_filter('wp_list_categories', 'show_active_category');

and here is my version

function show_active_category($text) {
global $post;
if( is_single() ) {
$categories = wp_get_post_categories($post->ID);
foreach( $categories as $cat )
{
//var_dump($cat);
if(preg_match('#
	<li class="cat-item cat-item-'.$cat.'">#', $text))
{
$text = str_replace('</li>
	<li class="cat-item cat-item-'.$cat.'">', '</li>
	<li class="cat-item cat-item-'.$cat.' current-cat">', $text);
}
}
}
return $text;
}
add_filter('wp_list_categories', 'show_active_category');

you can put the above your in your functions.php file and no need to install an extra plugin.

That’s it.