Wordpress - Add class to before_widget from within a custom widget

Aha, so the $before_widget variable is a string representing div element: <div class="widget my" id="my-widget-1"> . So I checked the $before_widget for the "class" sub-string and added my $widget_width value to it.

The code is from my custom widget file:

function widget( $args, $instance ) {
  extract( $args );
  ... //other code

  $widget_width = !empty($instance['widget_width']) ? $instance['widget_width'] : "col300";
  /* Add the width from $widget_width to the class from the $before widget */
  // no 'class' attribute - add one with the value of width
  if( strpos($before_widget, 'class') === false ) {
    // include closing tag in replace string
    $before_widget = str_replace('>', 'class="'. $widget_width . '">', $before_widget);
  }
  // there is 'class' attribute - append width value to it
  else {
    $before_widget = str_replace('class="', 'class="'. $widget_width . ' ', $before_widget);
  }
  /* Before widget */
  echo $before_widget;

  ... //other code
}

I wanted to add my $widget_width variable to the widget div element within my own widget code (while I had an easy access to the $widget_width variable).

Hope that makes sense and will help someone.

Thanks, Dasha

you can use dynamic_sidebar_params filter hook to find your widget and add your classes to it:

add_filter('dynamic_sidebar_params', 'add_classes_to__widget'); 
function add_classes_to__widget($params){
    if ($params[0]['widget_id'] == "my-widget-1"){ //make sure its your widget id here
        // its your widget so you add  your classes
        $classe_to_add = 'col480 whatever bla bla '; // make sure you leave a space at the end
        $classe_to_add = 'class=" '.$classe_to_add;
        $params[0]['before_widget'] = str_replace('class="',$classe_to_add,$params[0]['before_widget']);
    }
    return $params;
} 

Another way I found to add a class for a custom widget is to use the the 'classname' key of your construct function like in:

class My_Widget_Class extends WP_Widget {
// Prior PHP5 use the children class name for the constructor…
// function My_Widget_Class()
       function __construct() {
            $widget_ops = array(
                'classname' => 'my-class-name',
                'description' => __("Widget for the sake of Mankind",'themedomain'),
            );
            $control_ops = array(
                'id_base' => 'my-widget-class-widget'
            );
   //some more code after...

   // Call parent constructor you may substitute the 1st argument by $control_ops['id_base'] and remove the 4th.
            parent::__construct(@func_get_arg(0),@func_get_arg(1),$widget_ops,$control_ops);
        }
}

And be sure to use default 'before_widget' in your theme or if you use register_sidebar() in function.php, do it like this:

//This is just an example.
register_sidebar(array(
          'name'=> 'Sidebar',
            'id' => 'sidebar-default',
            'class' => '',//I never found where this is used...
            'description' => 'A sidebar for Mankind',
            'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',//This is the important code!!
            'after_widget' => '</aside>',
            'before_title' => '<h3>',
            'after_title' => '</h3>',
        ));

Then on every instances of your widget, you will have the class 'widget my-class-name' like this:

<aside class="widget my-class-name" id="my-widget-class-widget-N"><!-- where N is a number -->
  <h3>WIDGET TITLE</h3>
  <p>WIDGET CONTENT</p>
</aside>

You may also call the parent constructor first and then append whatever class name you want :

class My_Widget_Class extends WP_Widget {
    // Better defining the parent argument list …
    function __construct($id_base, $name, $widget_options = array(), $control_options = array())
    {    parent::__construct($id_base, $name, $widget_options, $control_options);
         // Change the class name after
         $this->widget_options['classname'].= ' some-extra';
    }
}