Attaching a navigation menu to the admin bar?

It turns out to be very easy! No need for a special walker, wp_get_nav_menu_items() returns everything you need. This example adds an single root menu item and then the menu, you can do this differently if you want. It maps all extra menu features I could find in the code, I don’t know whether you can set them all in the menu UI.

add_action( 'admin_bar_menu', 'wpse15186_admin_bar_menu' );
function wpse15186_admin_bar_menu( &$wp_admin_bar )
{
    $menu = wp_get_nav_menu_object( 'WPSE 15186 test menu' );
    $menu_items = wp_get_nav_menu_items( $menu->term_id );

    $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array(
        'id' => 'wpse15186-menu-0',
        'title' => 'WPSE 15186 menu',
    ) );

    foreach ( $menu_items as $menu_item ) {
        $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array(
            'id' => 'wpse15186-menu-' . $menu_item->ID,
            'parent' => 'wpse15186-menu-' . $menu_item->menu_item_parent,
            'title' => $menu_item->title,
            'href' => $menu_item->url,
            'meta' => array(
                'title' => $menu_item->attr_title,
                'target' => $menu_item->target,
                'class' => implode( ' ', $menu_item->classes ),
            ),
        ) );
    }
}

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