Trying to get items out of wp_nav_menu

It is a little hard to give specific details, but you can capture the output of wp_nav_menu in a variable (as you seem to have done) and then use preg_match_all to extract the links:

$menu = wp_nav_menu(array('echo' => false));
if (preg_match_all('#(<a [^<]+</a>)#',$menu,$matches)) {
   foreach ($matches[0] as $link) {
      // Do something with the link
      echo '<p>',htmlentities($link),'</p>';
   }
}

Thank you very much for taking the time to write.

Thats a lot closer than I have got, I haven’t heard of preg_match_all. I’ve been looking at it on PHP.net – i’m trying to work out what the first argument does, or how you choose what goes in it. You have #(<a>)# – does that tell the PHP to look for those elements or something?

So far your code has returned a link with html round it, and the link in the middle. Do you know how i take just the link out? Or just the name of the page?

Thanks again, Dan

can you not add these css classes to the links in the menu admin?
https://img545.imageshack.us/img545/4026/menucss.jpg

maybe you need to change the screen options first?
https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2097/menuclass.jpg

I have looked into it, but i’m trying to make things in as “user-frendly” was as I can. By doing the stuff I said about in the first post, i’m trying to use the great front end in the Admin panel to gain a list of links from the user. Then, i’d like to do some other stuff with it.

One of things I want to do its add a span with an individual class to each li in my main nav. If i can put it through a loop i think i can do this. That way I have some unique identifiers for JQuery to target. I can’t see another way to attach JQuery to single A tags in the navigation…..you welcome to make other suggestions though.

Dan

…and thank you for taking the time to do the images alchymyth

Not sure if you want just the URL, or the href= part, so I left the href in:

$menu = wp_nav_menu(array('echo' => false));
   if (preg_match_all('#(<a [^<]+</a>)#',$menu,$matches)) {
      $hrefpat = '/(href *= *([\"\']?)([^\"\' ]+)\2)/';
      foreach ($matches[0] as $link) {
         // Do something with the link
         if (preg_match($hrefpat,$link,$hrefs)) {
            $href = $hrefs[1];
         }
         if (preg_match('#>([^<]+)<#',$link,$names)) {
            $name = $names[1];
         }
         echo "<p>Name: $name   $href</p>";
      }
   }

vtxyzzy, that is fantastic! It generates the name and link! I’ve spent some time looking though the info on preg_match_all today, its looks like a very useful function. I now need to figure out how to add the arguments I want like you have. I can see some of the characters are escaped? I think that’s the correct term for it. If you have the time or patience to explain, how did you know what to place in the $hrefpat variable? The * looks for anything either side of the equals sign I believe, but what about the crazy looking stuff in brackets?

Thanks again ??

Hold your breath! Here is the blow by blow explanation:

'/(href *= *([\"\']?)([^\"\' ]+)\2)/';

'/ Start the pattern

( Begin saving characters in $matches[1]

href Find href

* Followed by zero or more spaces

= Followed by =

* Followed by zero or more spaces

( Begin saving characters in $matches[2]

[\"\']? Followed by an optional quote mark

) End saving in $matches[2]

( Begin saving in $matches[3]

[^\"\' ]+ Match 1 or more characters not a quote or space

) End saving in $matches[3]

\2 Followed by what is now in $matches[2]

) End saving in $matches[1]

/' End the pattern

i’ve literally read that 10 times through to try and grasp it haha. Its looks logical…i think….

Am I correct in thinking matches [3] holds the actual link? Its looks like 1 gets the href, 2 gets the quote (and then puts a closing quote at the end too) – so that leaves the link itself.

Also, in the code you wrote for the name match, its starts with a hash and a greater than, does the hash mean link?

This stuff is fantastic, thanks for writing it for me. Im going to copy and save all of it….

[3] holds the URL that the href refers to inside the <a tag to give a complete link.

The hash is an alternate way to start a pattern. You can use any one of a number of characters as long as you start and end the pattern with the same character. I usually use a slash ‘/’, or a hash ‘#’.

Ok, thats makes a reasonable amount of sense to me. You have been extremely helpful and i’m grateful for your time. I’m going to see what strange results I can get now. I’m starting to quite like PHP….