Benefits of using Nav Walker?

Question

Are there any benefits to using a nav walker class over iterating through wp_get_nav_menu_items()?

Nav walkers seem very clunky to me and iterating over an array feels easier and more re-usable but it then bypasses the internal menu filters of wordpress that I don't know much about. Will this make my theme incompatible with some plugins?

Best practice advice here would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I would say mostly you see the usage of wp_nav_menu(), which does use wp_get_nav_menu_items(). You can use wp_nav_menu() with the default walker or a custom walker.

To be honest I can't remember the time I did a menu manually, with wp_get_nav_menu_items() or something else, and I tend to be lazy, so this is definitely more work.

The Walker Class gives you a lot of possibilities as there is more information available, which definitely is big plus. So whether you should leverage a walker - or otherwise (I'd say) use wp_nav_menu() - is pretty much a question of what you need to achieve, for more complex menus I personally would always go with a walker. Last but not least, walkers are nicely reusable, which is pretty neat and another plus.

Answer 2

Use the default walker, it covers 99.999999999999.... ... 999999999999% of instances via its filters, and it's maintained by someone smarter than both of us, and used by a lot of people.

If you need to do something that requires modifying the walker, use a subclass.

Otherwise you're going to lose compatibility with anything that uses the walker filters, and half the features from the nav menu interface will need to be reimplemented from scratch

Answer 3

Flexibility & cleanliness.

Walker-based classes are an excellent way to generate custom output based on any branched data object. They keep your code lean, mean, and easily readable. You can define output for the start and end of each "branch" (any menu item with sub-menu items) as well as the start and/or end of each individual node/menu item. It's my go-to for generating complex custom menu markup using WordPress's menu objects.

1. First, create your custom walker class.
2. Then use wp_nav_menu() in your theme, and define 'walker' => new YourWalker as one of the arguments.
3. That's it.

See more about the Walker class's usage here.