Whenever you add a new item to WordPress Menu ( Appearance -> Menu
) it creates a new Post of Post Type nav_menu_item
and gets assigned a post meta called _menu_item_object_id
with the main Post ID.
For example, if I create a page called “Home” it gets assigned a Post ID of 2
. Now, when I go to Menus and add the page to a menu, WordPress creates a new post of post type nav_menu_item
, assigns the title to “Home”, gives it a ID in the database of 3
and assigns post meta _menu_item_object_id = 2
. If we want to change the title to “Homepage” in Menus, it would change the Post ID 3
to title “Homepage”.
If we wanted to change the title via metabox we would need to find Post Type nav_menu_item
that has post_meta _menu_item_object_id
with the same ID as our current page. I’m assuming you already have a metabox setup, are checking post types, and nonces.
if( 'page' == $post->post_type ) {
// Check Nonces
$nav_item = new WP_Query( array(
'post_type' => 'nav_menu_item', // Nav Post Type
'posts_per_page' => 1, // We only expect 1 result, if any
'meta_key' => '_menu_item_object_id', // With our Meta Key
'meta_value' => $post->ID // And our Correct Page
) );
if( $nav_item->have_posts() ) { // Ensure something was found
wp_update_post( array( // Update the `nav_menu_item` Post Title
'ID' => $nav_item->posts[0]->ID,
'post_title' => htmlspecialchars( sanitize_text_field( $_POST['_textbox_name'] ) )
) );
}
// Update Page Meta
}
At the end of the above code, you would also want to update the Pages post meta to the new title so you can re-display it in the metabox textbox which makes it easier for the user to update in the future.
Alternatively, if you want to update the metabox textbox whenever a user adds a new Item to the Menu you can reverse the process:
if( 'nav_menu_item' == $post->post_type ) {
// Check Nonces
$added_id = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_menu_item_object_id', true ); // This may or may not be a Page ID
$type = get_post_field( 'post_type', $added_id );
if( 'page' == $type ) {
// Update Page Metabox Textbox Here with `$post->post_title`
}
}