Sidebar

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Overview

The sidebar field allows you to select one or multiple sidebars. This field has several settings that can be displayed as a: simple select dropdown, checkbox list, or beautiful select dropdown with select2 library.

Screenshots

Beautiful select with select2 library (default):

Checkbox list:

Radio list:

Radio list inline:

Settings

Besides the common settings, this field has the following specific settings:

Name	Description
placeholder	The placeholder for the select box. Default is “Select a sidebar”. Applied only when the field_type is a select field.
field_type	How the sidebars are displayed? See below.

This field inherits the look and field (and settings) from other fields, depending on the field_type, which accepts the following value:

Field type	Description	Settings inherited from
select	Simple select dropdown.	select
select_advanced	Beautiful select dropdown using the select2 library. This is the default value.	select_advanced
checkbox_list	Flatten list of checkboxes which allows to select multiple items.	checkbox_list
radio_list	Flatten list of radio boxes which allows to select only 1 item.	radio

Note that for checkbox_list, the multiple setting is always set to true.

Sample code

This code shows sidebars in select2 dropdown:

array(
    'name'        => 'Sidebar',
    'id'          => 'sidebar',
    'type'        => 'sidebar',

    // 'clone'    => true,

    // Field type.
    'field_type'  => 'select_advanced',

    // Placeholder.
    'placeholder' => 'Select a sidebar',
),

The code below shows sidebars in a radio list format:

array(
    'name'        => 'User',
    'id'          => 'sidebar',
    'type'        => 'sidebar',

    // 'clone'    => true,

    // Field type.
    'field_type'  => 'radio_list',

    // Inline radios? Inheritted from radio field.
    'inline'      => true,
),

Data

This field saves sidebar ID(s) in the database.

If field is not multiple, then a single sidebar ID is saved in the database. Otherwise, the field saves multiple sidebar IDs in the database, where each sidebar ID is store in a single row in the database with the same meta key (similar to what add_post_meta does with last parameter false).

If the field is cloneable, then the value is stored as a serialized array in a single row in the database.

Template usage

If field is not multiple, getting value is simple:

$sidebar_id = rwmb_meta( $field_id );
if ( is_active_sidebar( $sidebar_id ) ) {
    dynamic_sidebar( $sidebar_id );
}

If field is multiple, you can loop through the returned values like this:

$sidebar_ids = rwmb_meta( $field_id );
foreach ( $sidebar_ids as $sidebar_id ) {
    if ( is_active_sidebar( $sidebar_id ) ) {
        echo '<aside class="sidebar">';
        dynamic_sidebar( $sidebar_id );
        echo '</div>';
    }
}

If you just want to output selected sidebars in an unordered list, use this code:

rwmb_the_value( $field_id );

Read more about rwmb_meta() and rwmb_the_value().