Retrieve array items without page ID

Question

I am using wp_list_pages to display our website's navigation.

The nav is supposed to be 2nd level pages only. I want the nav to display the array's first four items and then nest the rest of the items in a "more" dropdown.

What I'm trying to do is split the array so that the last few list items can be located in a different HTML tag that contains the more dropdown.

To display the first four items, I use 'include', however that requires the page ID. What I want is the first four items of the array no matter what the page ID is.

Two quick questions: How do I retrieve those first four items in the array? Is this the best way to split the array so that I can display the first four items and have the rest in a More dropdown?

Thanks in advance!

<?php
               wp_list_pages(
                     array(
                       'child_of' => $section_top_parent,
                       'post_type' => 'section',
                       'title_li' => NULL,
                       'depth' => 1,
                       'include' => array(2285, 34272, 2286, 2287),
                       'sort_order' => 'asc'
                   ));
 ?>

Answer 1

to get pages as array use get_pages() instead. now once we have a list we can check the size of list and split it. Let's have an example:

$allpages = get_pages(
    array(
        'child_of' => $section_top_parent,
        'post_type' => 'section',
        'depth' => 1,
        'sort_order' => 'asc'
    )
);
//check $allpages has any value
if($allpages){
    //calculate the array size
    $totalSize = sizeof($allpages);

    //now divide the array
    $firstFour = array_slice($allpages, 0, 4);
    
    $rest = array();
    //Check if the array has more than 4 items.
    if($totalSize > 4){

        //As we already got first for so we only need the rest of the pages.
        $rest = array_slice($allpages, 4, $totalSize-4 );
    }

    //now you can loop through both $firstFour & $rest to show them as you like.
}

You can a do foreach loop to present the items in your custom htlm.