How to get the Widget ID in wordpress

In this Post I will share a short snippet which will display the widget id inside the widget form.

One can also get the widget id by inspecting the html but I find that rather tedious and user unfriendly.  So I wrote this short snippet. All you need to do is include it on your site and every widget form will display the widget-id.

This is how it will appear

Snippet

Here is the snippet.

add_action('in_widget_form', 'spice_get_widget_id');

function spice_get_widget_id($widget_instance)

{
    
    // Check if the widget is already saved or not. 
    
    if ($widget_instance->number=="__i__"){
     
     echo "<p><strong>Widget ID is</strong>: Pls save the widget first!</p>"   ;
    
    
  }  else {

        
       echo "<p><strong>Widget ID is: </strong>" .$widget_instance->id. "</p>";
         
 
    }
}

Simply paste it in your functions.php file and you are good to go. You may also use the code snippet plugin.

Infact I highly Recommend using Code Snippets plugin for adding snippets to your wordpress website. It is not a good idea to make edits to your theme functions.php as the modification which get overwritten when you update the theme.

Basically we simple hook into the in_widget_form  filter and then echo the widget id.  To be doubly sure we first check if the widget instance actually exists.

Using a Plugin Instead

Some of the readers asked if there is a plugin to achieve this. So

I created a plugin based on this tutorial.

In case you are not comfortable with coding then simply download and install the Get Widget ID Plugin

Conclusion

As you can see its really simple to get the widget id. Just use this small snippet and save yourself some time 🙂

4 thoughts on “How to get the Widget ID in wordpress”

  1. Great snippet – thanks a lot!
    Here’s a mod for making strings translatable – for everyone, who may need it:

    // Function for displaying widget ids on widget admin page
    function spice_get_widget_id($widget_instance) {
    // Check if the widget is already saved or not.
    if ($widget_instance->number=="__i__"){
    echo "" . __( 'Widget ID is', 'pxelegance' ) . ": " . __( 'Pls save the widget first!', 'pxelegance' ) . "";
    } else {
    echo "" . __( 'Widget ID is', 'pxelegance' ) . ": " .$widget_instance->id. "";
    }
    }
    add_action('in_widget_form', 'spice_get_widget_id');

    Reply

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