WordPress change header navigation list items to div

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Let’s discuss about WordPress advanced developments of navigation. I want to change every ul, li tags into div tags of header menu. The header.wp_nav_menu() is always returns ul , li tags. This is I want to change this.

This is my code.

<ul>
  <li>Home</li>
  <li>About</li>
  <li>Contact</li>
</ul>

I want to changes to following format.

<div>
  <div>Home</div>
  <div>About</div>
  <div>Contact</div>
</div>

Let’s do this in easy way.

To do this, we need a custom walker. Open your function.php file.

1- Create a custom own class.

class Mymenu_Walker extends Walker_Nav_Menu
{
    function start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args)
    {
        $classes = empty($item->classes) ? array () : (array) $item->classes;
        $class_names = join(' ', apply_filters( 'nav_menu_css_class', array_filter( $classes ), $item ) );
        !empty ( $class_names ) and $class_names = ' class="'. esc_attr( $class_names ) . '"';
        $output .= "<div id='menu-item-$item->ID' $class_names>";
        $attributes  = '';
        !empty( $item->attr_title ) and $attributes .= ' title="'  . esc_attr( $item->attr_title ) .'"';
        !empty( $item->target ) and $attributes .= ' target="' . esc_attr( $item->target     ) .'"';
        !empty( $item->xfn ) and $attributes .= ' rel="'    . esc_attr( $item->xfn        ) .'"';
        !empty( $item->url ) and $attributes .= ' href="'   . esc_attr( $item->url        ) .'"';
        $title = apply_filters( 'the_title', $item->title, $item->ID );
        $item_output = $args->before
        . "<a $attributes>"
        . $args->link_before
        . $title
        . '</a></div>'
        . $args->link_after
        . $args->after;
        $output .= apply_filters( 'walker_nav_menu_start_el', $item_output, $item, $depth, $args );
    }
}

This class will return the expected output by adding filters.

You can learn more about WordPress wp navigation not working in thesis theme in my other post.

2- Call to the class.

Open your header.php file and call to wp_nav_menu function.

wp_nav_menu(
    array (
        'menu' => 'main-menu',
        'container' => 'div', // parent container 
        'container_id' => 'my_nav', //parent container ID
        'depth' => 1,
        'items_wrap' => '%3$s', // removes ul
        'walker' => new Mynav_Walker // custom walker to replace li with div
    )
);