Sridhar Katakam

Genesis and WordPress Tutorials

A slightly improved ‘Add Nav Extras’ code for adding Search in Navigation

by 9 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-09-14 at 4.52.38 PM

The code snippet for appending a search box in Primary or Secondary Navigation menu currently uses output buffering to display the output of get_search_form() like this:

ob_start();
get_search_form();
$search = ob_get_clean();
$menu .= '<li class="right search">' . $search . '</li>';
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We can simply use the false parameter in get_search_form() to return the search form as a string instead of echoing thus avoiding storing it in buffer.

$menu .= '<li class="right search">' . get_search_form( false ) . '</li>';
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Here’s the full code:

<?php
//* Do NOT include the opening php tag
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_items', 'theme_menu_extras', 10, 2 );
/**
* Filter menu items, appending a search form.
*
* @param string $menu HTML string of list items.
* @param stdClass $args Menu arguments.
*
* @return string Amended HTML string of list items.
*/
function theme_menu_extras( $menu, $args ) {
//* Change 'primary' to 'secondary' to add search form to the secondary navigation menu
if ( 'primary' !== $args->theme_location )
return $menu;
$menu .= '<li class="right search">' . get_search_form( false ) . '</li>';
return $menu;
}
view raw functions.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

References:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_search_form

http://php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php

  • Hello Sridhar,
    I can see that your code is simpler than the regular way of adding Nav Extras. But what advantage would not storing this in the output buffer give? Less memory used?
    Thank you,
    Richard

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