How to get category object from category name

Question

how do I get category object from category name? I can't seem to find a function that does that. if the category name is "my category". I tried running:

get_category('my category);

but it just returns 0.

Answer 1

You can use get_term_by function.

$category = get_term_by('name', 'my category', 'category')

Reference: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_term_by