Get css class of menu item in custom menu structure

Question

So, I've created custom markup for a menu. The functionality of the menu is built like so...

<?php 
  $parent = array();
    if (($locations = get_nav_menu_locations()) && isset($locations[$menu_name])){
      $menu = wp_get_nav_menu_object($locations[$menu_name]);
      $menu_items = wp_get_nav_menu_items($menu->term_id);
      $parent_id = 0;

    foreach((array)$menu_items as $key => $menu_item){
      if($menu_item->menu_item_parent == 0) { 
        $parent_id = $menu_item->db_id;
        $title = $menu_item->title;
        $url = $menu_item->url;
        $target = $menu_item->target;
        $class = $menu_item->classes;
        array_push($parent, array("title" => $title, "url" => $url, "target" => $target, "class" => $class));
    }
    else if($menu_item->menu_item_parent == $parent_id){
      $title = $menu_item->title;
      $url = $menu_item->url;
      $target = $menu_item->target;
      $class = $menu_item->classes;
      array_push($parent[count($parent) - 1]["child"], array("title" => $title, "url" => $url, "target" => $target, "class" => $class));
    }
    else{}
    }
  }

And the actual markup/output is built this way...

  foreach ($parent as $key => $value){
    if(empty($value["child"])){
      echo "<a href='" . $value["url"] . "' target='" . $value["target"] . "' class='" . $value["class"] . "'>" . $value["title"] . "</a>";
    }
    else
    {
    }
  }

However, I need to be able to access the custom class for the menu items in the code. Right now, using $class = $menu_item->classes; I get a class output, but it's simply class="Array".

Can anyone help me figure out how to split the classes and get the custom class to output into my markup?

Answer 1

What you're getting is an array so you need to implode() them - the Walker_Nav_Menu has something like this:

$class_names = esc_attr( implode( ' ', apply_filters( 'nav_menu_css_class', array_filter( $classes ), $item ) ) );

So you can modify your foreach to implode them in a similar fashion

$class = esc_attr( implode( ' ', apply_filters( 'nav_menu_css_class', array_filter( $menu_item->classes ), $menu_item) ) );

We still want to make sure that the nav_menu_css_class gets applied in case modifications has been made form that hook.