How to use wp_nav_menu to create a select menu dropdown?

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I’m using the following inside the wp_nav_menu function to create a select dropdown menu where each menu item is an option in the select dropdown…

'items_wrap' => '<select>%3$s</select>'
'before'     => '<option value="">'
'after'      => '</option>'

How do I add the link value in the 'before' declaration? Is there a better way to go about this? I know about wp_dropdown_pages, but that doesn’t work because I want users to be able to control the menu from the “Menus” page.

3

You can’t do this with wp_nav_menu, because it outputs list items, and you’ll generate invalid markup with your code.

Try using wp_get_nav_menu_items() instead.

A quick solution for a drop down menu with a custom walker:

class Walker_Nav_Menu_Dropdown extends Walker_Nav_Menu{

    // don't output children opening tag (`<ul>`)
    public function start_lvl(&$output, $depth){}

    // don't output children closing tag    
    public function end_lvl(&$output, $depth){}

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

      // add spacing to the title based on the current depth
      $item->title = str_repeat("&nbsp;", $depth * 4) . $item->title;

      // call the prototype and replace the <li> tag
      // from the generated markup...
      parent::start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args);
      $output = str_replace('<li', '<option', $output);
    }

    // replace closing </li> with the closing option tag
    public function end_el(&$output, $item, $depth){
      $output .= "</option>\n";
    }
}

In your templates use it like this:

wp_nav_menu(array(
  'theme_location' => 'primary', // your theme location here
  'walker'         => new Walker_Nav_Menu_Dropdown(),
  'items_wrap'     => '<select>%3$s</select>',
));

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