Custom Nav Walker to show siblings and children of current branch?

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I have seen very similar (if not exact) queries to this all over Google, but always seem to find something short of what I need. I am trying to create my full vertical menu using wp_nav_menu in my template. Only I would like to only show the current branch, siblings, and their children. Kind of an accordion-style menu. I prefer to do this in PHP, not using CSS or JQuery.

Example full menu:

- Home
- Products
   - Cool Item 1
      - Item 1 Details
      - Item 1 Gallery
   - Cool Item 2
      - Item 2 Details
      - Item 2 Gallery
- Services
   - Svc 1
   - Svc 2

If, for example, I am on current item “Cool Item 1”, I want to see all Root menu items, all Products, but only children of “Cool Item 1”, no children of “Cool Item 2” or any Services.
Like below:

- Home
- Products
   - Cool Item 1 (-current page-)
      - Item 1 Details
      - Item 1 Gallery
   - Cool Item 2
- Services

If I click on Services, I want to see:

- Home
- Products
- Services (-current page-)
   - Svc 1
   - Svc 2

Currently in my custom walker I have the star_el method like so: (make_menu_item is typical menu display you’d see searching walkers)

function start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args) {

    // am I on the current Item?
    if($item->current_item_ancestor or $item->current_item_parent or $item->current){
        $cur_branch = true;
    }
    // this works for all current branch items, but not siblings or children
    if( $cur_branch || $depth == 0 ) {
        $output .= $this->make_menu_item($item, $depth, $args);
    } else  {
        // need to know if my parents are in current branch, then OK to show children
        // not sure how to do that from this point?
        if($item->menu_item_parent && $depth > 0) {
            // this currently shows everything, not what I want
            // if this is removed, no children objects show, even under cur_branch
            $output .= $this->make_menu_item($item, $depth, $args);
        }
    }

}

I know this logic probably isn’t the best, but its a start. I can easily tell if I am in the “current branch” of the menu, and I have setup $item->hasChildren in the display_elements method, but hasChildren doesn’t do me any good for children of current. It would be most helpful I just knew at this point whether or not my parent object is in the current branch, because I could either show the menu item or not then, which is what I want.

I could do an SQL query, but I sure rather not do that. Is there a way to get parent info in the walker array’s and objects available ($item or $elements?) ? Maybe I am going about this all wrong? Seems like it should be easy to get parent info, but calling get_ancestors() here is giving me an empty array.

Thank you for any help!
Greg

1 Answer
1

Well, as much as I prefer to have my own walker and control over the nav, I found a plugin that does exactly what I want: Advanced Menu Widget
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-menu-widget/

Only tested slightly but its working just as I expected, just have to select “Only strictly related sub-menu” in the menu widget config. I should note, to other beginner theme devs like me, I tried this plugin once before and couldn’t figure out how to configure it. (couldn’t find the widget config) Well, that was only due to the fact that my theme didn’t have sidebars enabled yet, hence, no widgets!

Anyway I don’t like depending on a plugin for my theme nav, but its working so well, and I don’t have to build it. 🙂 Problem solved.

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