wp_dropdown_categories should add category slug as class to each option.

[jackreichert]

Portability is important for theme developers. With more and more developers using JS for enhanced functionality of their themes it's important to offer portable selectors for their use. Category ID's tend to change in the migration process, category names do not.

While it's important to keep the class clutter low, I believe adding the slug of a category as a class to each option in wp_dropdown_categories would be very helpful for developers.

I found this modification useful for a theme I was developing and offer this patch with hope that my solution may benefit other developers.

[jackreichert]

Patch for alternative solution to problem (details in comment)

[jackreichert]

Perhaps a better solution would be to offer an option that replaces the option value with the category slug. Patch for this solution added.

[boonebgorges]

The suggestion in comment 1 was implemented in [31006]. wp_dropdown_categories() now accepts a 'value_field' parameter, which allows the option values to be set as 'slug' (or any other term property) instead of the term ID. See #30306.

Since this provides a reliable way to render dropdowns in an ID-independent way, I'm going to mark this ticket as wontfix. If anyone has independent use cases for wanting slug-based classes on <option> elements, feel free to reopen with details.