wp_sidebar_description( string $id ): string|null
- Since
- 2.9.0
- Source
wp-includes/widgets.php:477
Description
When registering sidebars a 'description' parameter can be included that describes the sidebar for display on the widget administration panel.
Compatibility
- WordPress
- since 2.9.0
- PHP
- 7.4–8.6-dev
- 6.7.7
- 6.8.8
- 6.9.7
- 7.0.4
- 7.1.0
Present in every tracked release (6.7.7 to 7.1.0), and compiles on PHP 7.4 through 8.6-dev.
Parameters
$idstring- sidebar ID.
Return value
string|null- Sidebar description, if available.
Performance profile
How much work a call to wp_sidebar_description() does, and what it touches: the algorithmic scaling, the Zend instruction count per call across PHP versions, the hooks it hands control to, and the core code that calls it. Measured from the compiled opcodes, not a stopwatch, so every number is identical on any machine running the same PHP version, and every function in core is ranked by cost.
- Cost class
- Trivial
- Scaling
- Constant
- Instructions
- 4–15
- Plugin surface
- None
- Called by
- 2
Touches nothing outside its own arguments.
No loop in the body: the same number of instructions runs whatever you pass in.
Executed per call on PHP 8.5, depending on the branch taken. The body compiles to 17.
Nothing here hands control to plugin code.
2 places in core call this, so the cost is paid more often than your own code shows.
What one call costs · 2 distinct outcomes
One number would be a lie: the work depends on which branch runs. These are every distinct cost wp_sidebar_description() can have, taken from its control-flow graph on PHP 8.5.
| When | Instructions | Calls it makes |
|---|---|---|
| always | 4–8 | none |
is_scalar($id) && isset($value) | 15 | wp_kses() |
Across PHP versions
| PHP | Compiled | Executed | Branches | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.6-dev | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | |
| 8.5 | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | |
| 8.4 | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | |
| 8.3 | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | |
| 8.2 | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | |
| 8.1 | 17 | 4–15 | 2 | 2 fewer instructions than PHP 7.4 |
| 7.4 | 19 | 6–17 | 2 |
An instruction is not a fixed amount of time, so a matching count is not necessarily the same speed; what it rules out is a difference in the work itself.
Uses · 1
- wp_kses()Filters text content and strips out disallowed HTML.
Used by · 2
- WP_REST_Sidebars_Controller::prepare_item_for_response()Prepares a single sidebar output for response.
- wp_list_widget_controls()Show the widgets and their settings for a sidebar.
Source code
function wp_sidebar_description( $id ) { if ( ! is_scalar( $id ) ) { return null; } global $wp_registered_sidebars; if ( isset( $wp_registered_sidebars[ $id ]['description'] ) ) { return wp_kses( $wp_registered_sidebars[ $id ]['description'], 'sidebar_description' ); } return null;}Changelog
Introduced in 2.9.0. One change between 6.7.7 and 7.1.0.
Signature, return type and hooks compared across 5 parsed releases.
string|void to string|null.verified against sourceAbout this page
- Parsed data
- Generated from the wordpress-develop 7.1.0 tag, from
src/wp-includes/widgets.php, and regenerated for each WordPress release so it tracks the code rather than a snapshot of it. - Corrections
- Something wrong on this page? Report it and it gets fixed in the next regeneration.