List WordPress Custom Menu's active parent level's children as separate menu

Question

I have a structured Custom Menu:

• parent 1
  • children1_1
  • children1_2
• parent 2
  • children2_1
  • children2_2
• parent 3
• parent 4
  • children4_1

etc.

I want the following: on every page, the parent level items will be shown as main menu.

If a parent level item is active, I want to show the child menu items as a separate list somewhere else in the page.

Is there an "easy" way to achieve this, or do I have to list the menu every time and select the current one with PHP and have headache for this for days? :)

Thanks, cadeyrn

Answer 1

This plugin do exactly what you want!

Answer 2

This should be fairly simple to execute, using two calls to wp_list_pages(), and appropriate variables.

For the primary (i.e. top-level) navigation menu, simply use the depth argument, e.g.:

wp_list_pages( array(
     // display only top-level hierarchy
     'depth' => 1
) );

This will output a menu of all top-hierarchical-level Pages.

For the secondary (i.e. child-page) navigation menu, simply grab the ID of the current Page, and pass it as the child_of argument. This requires setting a variable to the $post->ID from inside the Loop, so that it is available outside of the Loop.

e.g. inside the Loop:

$parent_page = get_the_ID();

And then outside the Loop, for your child-page navigation menu:

wp_list_pages( array(
     // display all hierarchical levels
     'depth' => 0,
     // only children of the current Page
     'child_of' => $parent_page
) );

The only caveat is that this child-page menu must come after the Loop, or else you will need to make an initial pass through the Loop, find the $post->ID, and then rewind_posts() before the Loop.

Answer 3

Can't you just add some CSS code to your style.css something like display: inline-block; (instead of display: none;) to ul.sub-menu for the li.current_page_item?