Create a Wordpress admin menu item and link to a page

Question

I am trying to create a Wordpress menu item and link to an internal admin page. I have it working but it only works when the add_menu_page $Position is 1, i.e. if I set the $Position to 2 or higher, the link will take me to 'my_slug', which is nothing.

I am wanting the position of the link title to be below 'Dashboard', so having a $Position of 2 or 3. How can I do this so the menu link works with this $Position setup?

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'linked_url' );
function linked_url() {
add_menu_page( 'linked_url', 'Roster', 'read', 'my_slug', '', 'dashicons-calendar-alt', 2 );
}

add_action( 'admin_menu' , 'linkedurl_function' );
function linkedurl_function() {
global $menu;
$menu[1][2] = "internal url here";
}

Phil F Phil F · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-28T04:04:15

Overall, I think you have it right. I'm wondering if there is a conflicting plugin or something changing the menu order. I wouldn't rely on the hard coding the menu index (as it is in the question $menu[1][2] = ..., rather I'd search through the menu to find your matching unique slug. Here is a function I whipped up real quick that should help...

function add_menu_url ($page_title, $menu_title, $capability, $dest_url, $function = '', $icon_url = '', $position = NULL) {
    global $menu;

    $temp_slug = uniqid('my_random_temp_slug_');

    add_menu_page($page_title, $menu_title, $capability, $temp_slug, $function, $icon_url, $position);

    foreach ($menu as $position => &$page) {
        if ($page[2] === $temp_slug) {
            $page[2] = $dest_url;
            break;
        }
    }
}

And it's usage...

add_action('admin_menu', function () {
    add_menu_url('linked_url', 'Roster', 'read', '/wp-admin/tools.php?page=some-user-page#tab1', '', 'dashicons-calendar-alt', 3);
});

It functions exactly the same as add_menu_page but allows you to put any custom destination url (which I think is what you're trying to do) instead of a relative admin url.

NOTE: the $dest_url param can be any url. It does not have to strictly be a wordpress admin url. It could be an external link as well

The key is that it's assigning a unique random slug to the add_menu_page function, then after that's set, looping through the global $menu to find it's match. The loop is passing by reference, so we make the update in the loop, then break.

I also forgot to note that 2 is reserved for the main 'Dashboard' link and if you use 2, it will get re-indexed to another number. I would suggest using 3 to avoid this collision. Although the code I wrote above will take that into account regardless.

Create a Wordpress admin menu item and link to a page

1 Answers