wp_get_nav_menu_item runs esc_html on attributes

[pdclark]

In wp-includes/nav-menu-template.php, the function wp_get_nav_menu_item() runs esc_html on the attributes passed to the menu in line 155 through 159.

The specific attributes are before, after, link_before, and link_after.

This may be a "feature," not a bug, but below is the use case where I consider the use of esc_html to be in error:

Say I create a menu, and for styling purposes, would like to wrap each link in a DIV:

$atts = array(
	'container_class' => 'menu-header',
	'before' => '<div>',
	'after' => '</div>',
	'menu' => '',
);

wp_nav_menu( $atts );

Expected output for a link for this would be:

<li><div><a href="#">Link</a></div></li>

Instead, esc_html turns it into:

<li>&lt;div&gt;<a href="#">Link</a>&lt;/div&gt;</li>

Which causes those <div> tags to be output as actual text, rather than being used for markup.

Working around the esc_html gets a bit hacky, with one solution looking like this:

$atts = array(
	'container_class' => 'menu-header',
	'echo' => false,
	'before' => '%div%',
	'after' => '%/div%',
	'menu' => '',
 );

wp_nav_menu( $atts );
$menu = str_replace(
	array( '%div%', '%/div%',),
	array( '<div>', '</div>',),
	$menu
);

echo $menu;

It seems to me that it might make more sense to apply esc_html via a filter, so it can be added or removed in a more standard way, or to do away with it all together, assuming that the before and after attributes are going to often be used for HTML markup.

Sounds like it should be removed.

I got it.

(In [14013]) These nav_menu parameters should not be esc_html()d. fixes #12715. props ptahdunbar