If Page Is Parent or Child

There are built in conditional WordPress functions for testing for a page:

if ( is_page(2) ) {
  // stuff
}

Or for testing if a page is a child of a certain page:

if ( $post->post_parent == '2' ) {
  // stuff
}

But there is no built in function that combines these two things, which is a fairly common need. For example, loading a special CSS page for a whole “branch” of content. Like a “videos” page and all its children individual videos pages.

This function (add to functions.php file) creates new logical function to be used in this way:

function is_tree($pid) {      // $pid = The ID of the page we're looking for pages underneath
	global $post;         // load details about this page
	if(is_page()&&($post->post_parent==$pid||is_page($pid))) 
               return true;   // we're at the page or at a sub page
	else 
               return false;  // we're elsewhere
};

Usage

if (is_tree(2)) {
   // stuff
}

Comments

Paul

# September 14, 2009

Hey,

how can I make it work with categories?

if I just replace ‘is_page’ with ‘is_category’ it is true for the category overview but not for alle the articles in it..

Paul

Dominic

# October 26, 2009

This is good, but it only works one level deep.

From the WordPress Codex:
“Note that if you have more than one level of pages the parent page is the one directly above and not the one at the very top of the hierarchy.”

See more about this at the WP Codex: Conditional Tags

P.S.
I hope noone made a buck out of this snippet, it’s straight from the wordpress codex.

Port 80

Permalink to comment# November 30, 2010
NB I had this problem ‘only works one level deep’

But this function works with all ‘ancestors’ not just single level ‘child’ pages

also take straight from the WP codex http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags function
```
function is_tree($pid)
{
  global $post;

  $ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post->$pid);
  $root = count($ancestors) - 1;
  $parent = $ancestors[$root];

  if(is_page() && (is_page($pid) || $post->post_parent == $pid || in_array($pid, $ancestors)))
  {
    return true;
  }
  else
  {
    return false;
  }
};
```
Loading...
Rams

Permalink to comment# April 10, 2013

Port 80! MAARRRYY MEEEE.

Thanks.

Loading...
erez

Permalink to comment# October 10, 2013

Port 80 – Thank you!

Loading...
Andy Ford

Permalink to comment# July 3, 2014

Port 80’s is_tree() function does the trick but will throw a Notice if PHP notices are turned on. As a workaround I added:

if ( $root < 0) { return false; }

just after:

$root = count($ancestors) - 1;

and just before:

$parent = $ancestors[$root];

Haven't done a ton of testing but so far this seems to be working as expected.

Loading...
Andy Ford

Permalink to comment# July 3, 2014

Well my “greater than” angle bracket got escaped but here’s the idea:

if ($root [LESS THAN] 0) { return false; }

Loading...

Celso Bessa

# July 17, 2017

I’ve been using this version, which allows to find page/child/grandchild using slug

function is_tree( $page_id, $use_slug = false ) {

    if ( $use_slug === true && !is_string( $page_id ) ) {
        return false;
    } else if ( $use_slug !== true && !is_int( $page_id ) ) {
        return false;
    }

    if ( $use_slug === true ) {
        $page_data = get_page_by_path( $page_id );
        if ( null === $page_data ) {
            return false;
        }
        $page_id = $page_data->ID;
    }

    global $post;         // load details about this page
    if( is_page( $page_id ) ) {
        return true;   // we're at the page or at a sub page
    }

    $anc = get_post_ancestors( $post->ID );
    foreach ( $anc as $ancestor ) {
        if( is_page() && $ancestor == $page_id ) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;  // we're elsewhere

};

I think it can use some improvement and it is not much elegant, but I hope it helps.

Devin

# May 18, 2010

Nice snippet here!

Brenna

# August 13, 2010

How can you use this if you don’t want to specify a certain page ID. I need to be able to check dynamically if any current page I happen to be on is part of a branch (whether it’s the parent or child), and if so, then output a menu depending on whatever page ID it automatically retrieves.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

# November 7, 2010

Thanks for this! :)

Ryan Burnett

# March 4, 2011

Thank you! Needed this for my WordPress theme sidebar :)

Keri

# May 15, 2011

Cool, thanks so much for posting this! Very useful =)

orangerie

# July 1, 2011

Just great, thanks !

Leo Gono

# September 14, 2011

Great tutorial! Thanks! I also have another approach on this.


<?php  global $post; 
if ( is_page('2') || $post->post_parent == '2'){
	//stuff if page has id of 2 and its subpages
}
else {
	//stuff if not
}
?>

Leo Gono

Permalink to comment# September 14, 2011

i figure it out that the above tutorial is better than my approach. I’m going to use that approach from now on.

Loading...

Ryan

# November 21, 2011

Had to tackle this today and the below worked perfectly for me (works with any nesting level)


if (is_page(27) || in_array(27, $post->ancestors))
{
   // stuff if your page has ID of 27 or is a subpage (any nested level) of page ID 27
}

James

Permalink to comment# September 11, 2012

Thanks man, this is what I needed.

Loading...
Gil

Permalink to comment# January 7, 2013

Hey Ryan. this is exactly what I was missing.. thanks for posting that!

Loading...
Seth

Permalink to comment# March 15, 2015

So glad you posted this! Port 80s code really didn’t make a lot of sense… this was super short and efficient and did exactly what I needed to do without a lot of random variables that add confusion :)

Thanks!

Loading...

Loncey Craig

# January 3, 2012

Hi there,
I’m just wondering about this coding. I have a website that I’m building where the Parent has Child pages. Eg… I have a Parent page that is called:

ABOUT US (parent page)
Company Overview (child page)
Director (child page)

The company Overview page is fine because its the same page as about page. But when I click on Director Page I want the Parent Page “ABOUT US” to be highlighted as well. So both pages would be highlighted the child and parent page. The coding I’ve done is really simple. Its as follows

ABOUT US – nav coding.

<a class="about_us" href="”

and DIRECTOR – nav coding.

Is there a coding where I can say if the parent page we are on is “ABOUT US” to make it show it selected as well? Can you write me an example please

Thanks in Advance.
Oh and the link for the website is http://www.fairwayviewapartmentssamoa.com

Matthew Taylor

# February 8, 2012

Thank you tremendously for sharing this. I have come across your site multiple times now while searching for help on various things. Keep it up, and tank you again.

David Becerra

# March 23, 2012

Anyway of making this work by slug?

I imagine we’d have to get the id from the slug.

I’m gonna play around some this weekend.

Zack Andrews

Permalink to comment# May 24, 2012
Not sure if you ever figured this out, but for those who want to know:

Add this to functions:
```
function is_tree($pid) {
	global $post;
	if(is_page()&&($post->post_parent==$slug||is_page($slug)))
               return true; 
	else
               return false;
};
```
In order to make this work for the slug instead of the page ID. And yes, the $pid is needed in the function call, I’m not sure the exact reason but $slug doesn’t work there.

Loading...

Brandon Cook

# April 26, 2012

This was exactly what I needed!!!

I was trying to edit the submenu navigational links on pages based on the child of a parent.

In a nut shell, when on a child page, I needed the nav menu to reflect the links of the parent of the child not the child itself.

This tutorial helped to push me in the right direction. Now I can add a custom class to the current page!

Mike Stimson

# June 13, 2012

This worked perfectly.

Thank you very much.

rena

# July 26, 2012

Hello,
This is exactly what i need. And the best thing is, your snippet works like a charm! thank you so much :)

Nick Overman

# September 27, 2012

Thanks so much for this! It totally saved my butt

Mike

# October 18, 2012

I use this function on almost every project!

if (have_problem()) {
go to css-tricks.com
}

Adam Nguyen

Permalink to comment# December 2, 2012

Exactly :d

Loading...

Bojan

# November 6, 2012

This is what i was looking for.

Thanks.

Adam Nguyen

# December 2, 2012

Great tip.
Thanks for sharing :)

Rams

# February 10, 2013

Still loving this one (: cheers

Niko

# March 16, 2013

You could do is like this:

function tree(){
  $class = '';
  if( is_page() ) { 
  global $post;
      /* Get an array of Ancestors and Parents if they exist */
  $parents = get_post_ancestors( $post->ID );
      /* Get the top Level page->ID count base 1, array base 0 so -1 */ 
  $id = ($parents) ? $parents[count($parents)-1]: $post->ID;
     /* Get the parent and set the $class with the page slug (post_name) */
  $parent = get_page( $id );
  $class = $parent->post_name;
}
return $class;
}

and you can cale it this way:

if(tree()=="myPageSlug1"){ echo" Hello World" }

Now you get an Hello World on every childpage of myPageSlug1

Jay

# May 20, 2013

Sweet. Saved my butt!

Chris

# June 25, 2013

How do you write a function that checks if $post->post_parent is equal to one or another id instead of just a single id?

Mirko y3B4ch

# September 17, 2013

Chris, why dont you lock this topic as well. You already closed a shit load of other useful topics.

Cumhur Günay

# October 2, 2013

İs there a any code or condition that is check that the current page has a subpage or not. I dont mean that the current page has a parent page or not.

Cumhur Günay

Permalink to comment# October 2, 2013

İ got it :)))

query(array(‘post_type’ => ‘page’));
$id = $post->ID;

$children = get_page_children( $id, $all_wp_pages );
if($children) {
echo “Parent”;
}
?>

Loading...

Cumhur Günay

# October 2, 2013

Correction of Code.

query(array(‘post_type’ => ‘page’));?>
<?php $id = $post->ID;

            $children = get_page_children( $id, $all_wp_pages ); ?>
            <?php if($children) { ?>
                <h1>Parent</h1> 
            <?php } else { ?>
                <h1>Child</h1>  
            <?php } ?>

Mark Johnson

# October 15, 2013

Here’s my direction. Hopefully it’s helpful to someone looking to show both contingent depth and specific subpage content. I’m using the list_pages_at_depth(); plugin here. Looks for children on the second and third levels, then shows some pages.

Scott Brown

# September 22, 2015

Really helpful, thanks so much

Phil Cook

# September 1, 2016

Created a function to look at the current page and any parent pages, it searches through the hierarchy one by one looking to match against the slug URL. I choose the slug URL rather that ID as these are always different between our local, staging and production enviroments but the URL stays consistant.

I created a gist for this here.
https://gist.github.com/philcook/15bd50aeb8f80315d2bcaa9720c45bbb

edveraxo

# January 30, 2019

Chris Coyier, WOW! Thanks you!

idleberg

# February 27, 2019

$root = count($ancestors) - 1;
$parent = $ancestors[$root];

These lines from Port80’s seem to be a left-over. $parent is never used, hence $root isn’t required either:

function is_tree($pid)
{
    global $post;

    $ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post->$pid);

    if(is_page() && (is_page($pid) || $post->post_parent == $pid || in_array($pid, $ancestors))) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

robertherold

# May 4, 2020

And what about bbPress, for example? Because it doesn’t work there :(

Usage

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply