How to List the Last Post from a Specific WordPress Category with an Excerpt

For a recent project I wanted to do something a little different with the list of categories in the sidebar. Instead of simply listing each category, I wanted to list an excerpt from the last post in that category.

I wasn’t quite sure how to do this although I did know that I needed an array of the categories I wanted to use. After a little trial and error and asking a friend a question, I came up with the following piece of code.

<?php $cats_to_get = array('facebook', 'pinterest', 'wordpress'); ?>
<?php foreach($cats_to_get as $cat_to_get): ?>
<?php query_posts('category_name='.$cat_to_get.'&posts_per_page=1'); ?>
  <strong><?php single_cat_title() ?></strong>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
      
         <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"> <?php the_excerpt(); ?>  
 
        <?php endwhile; ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>

The code will produce the following:

zerojay