removing <li> tags from wp_list_pages() using PHP

Question

as the title states, I am trying to remove the <li></li> tags from the list that gets generated with wp_list_pages().

My thinking is to somehow run a for/foreach loop through the menu items and remove the <li></li> tags using str_replace(), but first I would need to parse the returned list into an array or something to traverse through the list items...

Any ideas on how I can accomplish that? or maybe a better way of going about it?

Thanx in advance!

Answer 1

You could try to remove them, but maybe it's easier to not generate them in the first place. The page list is displayed by a Walker. This is a class that "walks" over all the items in the tree, and displays them. wp_list_pages() by default (via walk_page_tree()) uses the Walker_Page class, which displays everything in <li> elements. However, you can duplicate this class, remove everything it in you don't need, and pass that class to wp_list_pages() (with the walker argument).

Answer 2

if you don't want to create your own walker, simply use str_replace(array('<li>', '</li>', '<ul>', '</ul>'), '', wp_list_pages('echo=0'));

Answer 3

Thanx for the answers guys, I've edited my answer to reflect Jan Fabry's comment about the echo=0 argument, also thanx to One Trick Pony for pointing that out initially.

$lookfor = array('<li','</li>');
$replacewith = array('<div', '</div>');

$args = array(
    'echo'          => 0,
    'sort_column'   => 'menu_order',
    'title_li'      => __('')
);

$output = wp_list_pages( $args ); 

echo str_replace($lookfor,$replacewith,$output);

I will definitely look into creating a custom walker, as it seems to be the better way of achieving the result?

Thanx again for all your help!