Can “Recent Posts” widget be filtered by functions.php?

Question

I have my own "Recent Posts" menu, but its not currently implemented as a Widget. I'm just including it in sidebar.php.

I had to "roll my own" so to speak in order to filter the menu of certain categories whose posts I don't want to appear in the menu.

Would it be possible, via functions.php, to filter the default "Recent Posts: widget's menu items in order to exclude posts belonging to a specific category?

If so, I'd really be grateful for an example.

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is no filter for WP_Query args in WP_Widget_Recent_Posts class, so it's impossible. I think there are plugins for recent post that have category filtering option - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/recent-posts