How to show children pages as array

Question

I am creating a template that would display children pages of a parent page.

Employees

♦ Managers

♦ IT guys

♦ Designers

I want parent page (employees) to display its children pages.

I've tried this: (in functions.php)

function wpb_list_child_pages() { 

global $post; 

if ( is_page() && $post->post_parent )

    $childpages = wp_list_pages( 'sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&child_of=' . $post->post_parent . '&echo=0' );
else
    $childpages = wp_list_pages( 'sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&child_of=' . $post->ID . '&echo=0' );

if ( $childpages ) {

    $string = '<ul>' . $childpages . '</ul>';
}

return $string;

}

add_shortcode('wpb_childpages', 'wpb_list_child_pages');

and declaration in my page's template:

echo wpb_list_child_pages();

I get a list of children pages but as a list (of course, there is nothing wrong with the code)

I want to enlist children as items of an array so that I can do something like this:

$page1 = childrenID[0];
$page2 = childrenID[1];
$page3 = childrenID[2];

I want this so that I can theme children pages (by ID) on their parent page.

I hope I am clear.

Update

After using this: `global $post; $parent_id = the_ID();

$children = get_posts(array( 'post_parent' => $parent_id, 'fields' => 'ids' ));

echo $string = '

' . implode('

', $children) . '

';`

I am getting a list of IDs which are of some posts and not pages.

Answer 1

You should use get_posts function.

global $post;
$parent_id = $post->ID;

$children = get_posts(array(
    'post_parent' => $parent_id,
    'fields' => 'ids'
));

$string = '<ul><li>' . implode('</li><li>', $children) . '</li></ul>';

• get_posts function
• WP_Query class