children() returns an array of values relating to the child pages of the current page.¹⁾ Normally, then, it is not used on its own, but to give some information about published subpages to a given page.

The array produced by children() requires a foreach loop to present usable information. The most simple listing of subpage titles, then, could look like this:

<h3>List of pages</h3>
 
<ul>
    <?php  foreach ($this->children() as $child) : ?>
    <li><?php echo $child->title(); ?></li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

In situations when in return only a single result is desired, the foreach loop should be ditched in favor of limit ⇒ 1 argument (see Arguments below in this page), otherwise it will not work and a fatal error is returned instead. The example below returns the last published page from Articles as the parent page.

<?php 
  $page_article = $this->find('/articles/');
  $last_article = $page_article->children(array('limit'=>1, 'order'=>'page.created_on DESC')); ?>
    <h2 class="post_title"><?php echo $last_article->link(); ?></h2>
    <?php echo $last_article->content(); ?>
    <?php if ($last_article->hasContent('extended')) echo $last_article->link('Continue Reading&#8230;'); ?>

For further information on how to use children() in constructing menus, see how to Display a list of subpages.

By default, children() only returns “published” pages.²⁾ In the following line of code, the final 'true' tells Wolf to include hidden pages as well:

$this->children(null,array(),true)

Four more arguments can be given to children() to further define the subpages it returns:

• where - sets a condition
• order - determines the sort order (by field name in page table [see note below], either ASC ascending, or DESC descending)
• offset - where in the list of subpages to begin the list
• limit - how many pages to return

Any of the fields in the page table can be used to sort your “children” pages. In first example, below, you could have:

'order' => 'title ASC'

to arrange the order by the page Title in A-Z order, or

'order' => 'slug DESC'

to order the list by “slug” value in Z-A order. That should give you the idea! While any value in the “page” table could be used here, the main options would include:

• title
• slug
• breadcrumb
• created_on
• published_on
• updated_on
• created_by_id
• updated_by_id

The default is position, which is set automatically when the drag-drop page re-ordering is used.

<?php $last_result = $this->children(array('limit' => 5, 'order' => 'created_on DESC')); ?>

Then you need to use $last_result instead of $this->children() in the foreach loop described above to produce the list. Adjusting the simple code above for listing the titles of the last five pages would look like this:

<h3>Last five pages</h3>
 
<ul>
    <?php $last_result = $this->children(array('limit' => 5, 'order' => 'created_on DESC')); ?>
    <?php  foreach ($last_result as $child) : ?>
    <li><?php echo $child->title(); ?></li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

If you only wanted to list results 3 and 4, for example, ordered by the position (by default), you would use:

<?php $last_result = $this->children(array('offset' => 2, 'limit' => 2)); ?>

Since PHP starts counting at “0”, the offset needs to starts at 0 not at 1. Thus setting the offset at “2” actually gives you the third page. Again, as in the previous example, $last_result is used in the foreach loop to produce the desired list.

To return a list of 10 hidden articles by published date for example, use the following:

<?php $last_result = $this->find('/articles/')->children(array('order'=>'published_on DESC','limit'=>10),array(),true); ?>