[Resolved] Display top-most parent (ancestor) page title in addition to current page title

[Marcus]

I’m trying to figure out a way (a hook perhaps?) to display the top-most PARENT (ancestor) Page’s Title in addition to the current page title. That way whenever the user is browsing page deeper in the site, like second or third-level pages, they still have a sense of what main section of the site they are.

Top-most PARENT Page Name · Page Title One”

-OR-

Top-most PARENT Page Name · Sub-sub-page Title Three

Ideally I would like it to be referencing the hierarchy and order of my main/global WP menu.

Any tips or direction would be most appreciated!

[David]

Hi there,

so like a breadcrumb trail based on menu hierarchy?
If so then maybe this stack will help:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/52040437

[Marcus]

Super-helpful link David… definitely gets me closer!

I was able to get that code to render, but when on third-level pages, it’s returning two names, instead of the top-most parent. I guess I could always hide the second name with a bit of CSS.

Right now I have a GP header element with:

<h1>{{post_title}}</h1>

…and I would love to take the code you referenced and somehow put that parent page name below.

<h2>{{***PARENT PAGE NAME HERE***}}</h2>

That way the user knows immediately what page they are on and within what section of the site. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks again for the excellent help this far!

[David]

Header Elements don’t support PHP – but they do support Shortcodes, so you could wrap the ouput function within a shortcode e.g

<?php

add_shortcode( 'custom_breadcrumb', 'db_custom_breadcrumb' );

function db_custom_breadcrumb() {
    ob_start();
    
    $parentitems = my_menu_parent( 'header-menu' );
    foreach ( $parentitems as $parentitem ) {
        echo $parentitem."<br>";
    }

    return ob_get_clean();

}
?>

Then call it using [custom_breadcrumb]

[Marcus]

You rule David!

So close to having this sorted… The shortcode worked a treat. I just can’t figure out how to get the foreach loop to return ONLY the top-most parent / ancestor.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/NhxCzfJ.jpg[/img]

[Tom]

Hi there,

In your my_menu_parent function, try replacing this:

return $breadcrumbs;

With this:

return $breadcrumbs[0];

Let me know if that works or not 🙂

[Marcus]

Thank you for jumping in on this Tom. Adding the “[0]” to the return made the text disappear instead of returning the first value of the array. Hmmm…

Here’s the function and shortcode block within my functions.php file if that helps:

function my_menu_parent($theme_location) {
    $locations = get_nav_menu_locations();
    if ( isset( $locations[ $theme_location ] ) ) {
        $menu = wp_get_nav_menu_object( $locations[ $theme_location ] );
        $menu_items = wp_get_nav_menu_items($menu->term_id);
        _wp_menu_item_classes_by_context( $menu_items );
        $breadcrumbs = array();
		
        foreach ( $menu_items as $menu_item ) {         
            if ($menu_item->current_item_ancestor) {
                $breadcrumbs[] = $menu_item->title;
            }
        }
        return $breadcrumbs;
     }
}

add_shortcode( 'custom_breadcrumb', 'db_custom_breadcrumb' );

function db_custom_breadcrumb() {
    ob_start();
    $parentitems = my_menu_parent( 'primary' );
    foreach ( $parentitems as $parentitem ) {
        echo $parentitem."<br>";
    }
    return ob_get_clean();
}

[Tom]

Ok, what if we replace this:

foreach ( $parentitems as $parentitem ) {
    echo $parentitem."<br>";
}

With this:

echo $parentitems[0];

We should be able to target that first item without looping through all of them. If it’s not 0, maybe try 1.

[Marcus]

That did it!

Don’t know why I didn’t think to just eliminate the loop altogether. 😉

Thank you so much Tom and David. You guys ROCK!!!

[Tom]

Glad we could help! 🙂

[Author]

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