wp_list_pages Hierarchical Help

Question

So I have been searching online for something that I think is simple to achieve and I am most likely over thinking it. I have found many related articles on the matter but can't seem to get it to apply to my scenario. I have a sidebar menu on my site that displays a tier of sub-pages. So if you click on "Services" the sidebar shows

• Service 1
• Service 2
• Service 3
• Service 4
• Service 5

This is perfect, as these are my 5 sub-pages underneath "Services". Now "Service 1, 2 & 3" have anywhere from 5-15 sub-pages under them. What I want to achieve is if you click on "Service 1" in the sidebar and the page loads the sidebar will adjust to show:

• Service 1 -- sub-page 1 -- sub-page 2 -- sub-page 3
• Service 2
• Service 3
• Service 4
• Service 5

So on the 3rd tier of pages I still want the sidebar to display the main sub-services links but if you are on a sub-service page that has its own sub-pages I would like it to display those sub-pages as well as the original main service sub-pages.

Currently I have only been able to get this show like this:

Click on "Service 1", sidebar menu reflects: - Service 1 -- sub-page 1 -- sub-page 2 -- sub-page 3 - Service 2 - Service 3 - Service 4 - Service 5

Which is good, but then if I click on one of those "sub-pages" the menu updates to only show the sub-pages of that service and not the menu structure that was there before.

Sorry for the long post. I have tried this link using a custom walker: http://wordpress.mfields.org/2010/selective-page-hierarchy-for-wp_list_pages/ I have also tried:

        <ul class="sidebar_menu">
            <?php wp_list_pages( array('title_li'=>'','include'=>get_post_top_ancestor_id()) ); ?>
            <?php wp_list_pages( array('title_li'=>'','depth'=>1,'child_of'=>get_post_top_ancestor_id()) ); ?>
        </ul>

No luck though. Thanks for any help! EDIT: Also have tried the following (which works up until the 3rd tier is reached, then it drops the "2nd" tier of sub-pages.)

        <?php
            $ancestor_id=$post->post_parent;
            $descendants = get_pages(array('child_of' => $ancestor_id));
            $incl = "";

            foreach ($descendants as $page) {
               if (($page->post_parent == $ancestor_id) ||
                   ($page->post_parent == $post->post_parent) ||
                   ($page->post_parent == $post->ID))
               {
                  $incl .= $page->ID . ",";
               }
            }
        ?>

        <ul>
            <?php wp_list_pages(array(
                "child_of" => $ancestor_id,
                "include" => $incl,
                "link_before" => "",
                "title_li" => "",
                "sort_column" => "menu_order"
                ));
            ?>
        </ul>

Answer 1

After you global $post, you can use the core WordPress function get_post_ancestors() to retrieve the parent pages.

Example

$ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post);
if($ancestors){
    foreach(array_reverse($ancestors) as $post_id){
        $ancestor_page = get_post($post_id);
    }
}

Then, to retrieve all child pages of the current page, you could make it easy by using a custom function. Place your custom function in your currently active theme functions.php file.

Example

if(!function_exists('mbe_get_post_children')){
    function mbe_get_post_children($object){
        $data = array();
        $query = new WP_Query(array(
            'posts_per_page' => '-1',
            'post_type' => $object->post_type,
            'post_status' => 'publish',
            'post_parent' => $object->ID
        ));
        wp_reset_query();
        wp_reset_postdata();
        if(!$query->posts){
            return false;
        }
        foreach($query->posts as $child_post){
            $data[] = $child_post;
            if($child_post->post_parent != $object->ID && $child_post->post_parent != 0){
                mbe_get_post_children($child_post);
            }
        }
        return $data;
    }
}

Then to use your custom function which retrieves all child pages of the current page, would be something very similar to the first example, which retrieves all parent pages of the current page.

Example

if(function_exists('mbe_get_post_children')){
    $children = mbe_get_post_children($post);
    if($children){
        foreach($children as $child_id){
            $child_page = get_post($child_id);
        }
    }
}