add a.parent in wp_list_pages

Question

In relation to question posted here, is it possible to have an output to have something like this instead? where class="parent" is applied to the hyperlink?

<ul>
    <li><a href="#">Page 1</a></li>
    <li><a class="parent" href="#">Page with Subpages</a>
        <ul class="children">
            <li><a class="parent" href="#">Page with another subpage</a>
                <ul class="children">
                    <li><a href="#">subsubpage</a></li>
                </ul>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="#">Page 3</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Page 4</a></li>
</ul>

the function below of TheDeadMedic works well for lists:

function add_parent_class( $css_class, $page, $depth, $args )
{
    if ( ! empty( $args['has_children'] ) )
        $css_class[] = 'parent';
    return $css_class;
}
add_filter( 'page_css_class', 'add_parent_class', 10, 4 );

is it possible to use a similar function to target hyperlinks instead of the lists?

Answer 1

According to this thread, you can add a custom Walker class to your wp_list_pages() call. It looks like that's the way to go, since wp_list_pages() prints or returns a string.

If you set $args['echo'] to false, you can do some string manipulation before you echo() it, but it seems to me that the Walker solution is probably the way to go.

Unfortunately the Walker documentation looks a little thin.