Get current category (taxonomy) children and prepare them for options element

Today I will share something that I use often. Getting the children of the current queried category or taxonomy and making from them an array containing slugs and titles (names).

This PHP function is very helpful when creating a <select> dropdown for subcategories filter for example.

<?php
/**
* Get current category (taxonomy) children and prepare them for options element. 
*
* @return array
*/

function get_product_cat_children()
{
  if (is_tax('product_category')) {
    $termID = get_queried_object()->term_id;
    $term_children = get_term_children( $termID, 'product_category' );
    $children_arr = array();
    foreach ($term_children as $child) {
      $term = get_term_by('id', $child, 'product_category');
      var_dump($term);
      $child_val = $term->slug;
      $child_name =$term->name;
      $children_arr[] = array('val' => $child_val, 'name' => $child_name );
    }

    return $children_arr;
  }
}

Usage example