is_active_sidebar() – Function | Developer.WordPress.org

Determines whether a sidebar contains widgets.

Description

For more information on this and similar theme functions, check out the Conditional Tags article in the Theme Developer Handbook.

Parameters

$indexstring|intrequired: Sidebar name, id or number to check.

Return

bool True if the sidebar has widgets, false otherwise.

Source

function is_active_sidebar( $index ) {
	$index             = ( is_int( $index ) ) ? "sidebar-$index" : sanitize_title( $index );
	$sidebars_widgets  = wp_get_sidebars_widgets();
	$is_active_sidebar = ! empty( $sidebars_widgets[ $index ] );

	/**
	 * Filters whether a dynamic sidebar is considered "active".
	 *
	 * @since 3.9.0
	 *
	 * @param bool       $is_active_sidebar Whether or not the sidebar should be considered "active".
	 *                                      In other words, whether the sidebar contains any widgets.
	 * @param int|string $index             Index, name, or ID of the dynamic sidebar.
	 */
	return apply_filters( 'is_active_sidebar', $is_active_sidebar, $index );
}

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Hooks

apply_filters( ‘is_active_sidebar’, bool $is_active_sidebar, int|string $index ): Filters whether a dynamic sidebar is considered “active”.

Uses	Description
sanitize_title()`wp-includes/formatting.php`	Sanitizes a string into a slug, which can be used in URLs or HTML attributes.
wp_get_sidebars_widgets()`wp-includes/widgets.php`	Retrieve full list of sidebars and their widget instance IDs.
apply_filters()`wp-includes/plugin.php`	Calls the callback functions that have been added to a filter hook.

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Changelog

Version	Description
2.8.0	Introduced.

User Contributed Notes

Skip to note 4 content

Codex 10 years ago

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Example
Display different output depending on whether the sidebar is active or not.
```
<?php if ( is_active_sidebar( 'left-sidebar' ) ) { ?>
	<ul id="sidebar">
		<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'left-sidebar' ); ?>
	</ul>
<?php } ?>
```
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drdogbot7 6 years ago

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In the description: “in use” means that the sidebar contains widgets.

Any sidebar that contains widgets will return TRUE, whereas any sidebar that does not contain any widgets will return FALSE.

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Isaac Lubow 7 years ago

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Note that you cannot search by sidebar name if the ID was not specifically declared when register_sidebar was called, and even then only when the ID is exactly the value of sanitize_title($sidebar_name).

The simple method used by the code (see above) is the reason for this:
```
$index = ( is_int($index) ) ? "sidebar-$index" : sanitize_title($index);
```
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is_active_sidebar( string|int $index ): bool

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