Change the display of Settings API (do_settings_sections)

Question

I am working on a plugin which uses Wordpress Settings API. I notice that the functions do_settings_sections (and do_settings_fields) display the fields using TABLE. How do I change its formatting? (I want to use DIV instead of TABLE)

Answer 1

There are no hooks to modify the output of do_settings_sections().

Hence the only option you have is to write custom versions of the functions do_settings_sections() and do_settings_fields(). They are located in /wp-admin/includes/template.php, lines 1159-1174 and 1190-1207 (wordpress version 3.2.1), respectively (do not modify them there).

You could (not saying it is necessarily advisable, consider compatibility with future versions of wp) include something like this in your plugin:

function custom_do_settings_sections($page) {
    global $wp_settings_sections, $wp_settings_fields;

    if ( !isset($wp_settings_sections) || !isset($wp_settings_sections[$page]) )
        return;

    foreach( (array) $wp_settings_sections[$page] as $section ) {
        echo "<h3>{$section['title']}</h3>\n";
        call_user_func($section['callback'], $section);
        if ( !isset($wp_settings_fields) ||
             !isset($wp_settings_fields[$page]) ||
             !isset($wp_settings_fields[$page][$section['id']]) )
                continue;
        echo '<div class="settings-form-wrapper">';
        custom_do_settings_fields($page, $section['id']);
        echo '</div>';
    }
}

function custom_do_settings_fields($page, $section) {
    global $wp_settings_fields;

    if ( !isset($wp_settings_fields) ||
         !isset($wp_settings_fields[$page]) ||
         !isset($wp_settings_fields[$page][$section]) )
        return;

    foreach ( (array) $wp_settings_fields[$page][$section] as $field ) {
        echo '<div class="settings-form-row">';
        if ( !empty($field['args']['label_for']) )
            echo '<p><label for="' . $field['args']['label_for'] . '">' .
                $field['title'] . '</label><br />';
        else
            echo '<p>' . $field['title'] . '<br />';
        call_user_func($field['callback'], $field['args']);
        echo '</p></div>';
    }
}