Walking down a branch

What are you stuck with?

well i’ve had a look at wp_nav_menu and how to extend it, but i dont know how to cut branches of, and also how to stop the expansion at a given level

Which theme are you working with?

its more or less my own theme using the cherry framework 3.x

The wp_nav_menu function with its default parameters will not limit the menu to a certain depth; https://developer.www.ads-software.com/reference/functions/wp_nav_menu/

You can control the depth of the menu through the $depth parameter. For example to assert a depth of 4 levels:

<?php 

$arguments = array(
    'depth' => 4
);

wp_nav_menu($arguments); 

?>

yes that i do know, but i need the depth to be variable, how do i know the level and branch for the selected item?

It sounds like you don’t need a depth and are facing a CSS issue. A typical navigation menu will only show the submenu items one level at a time, for example CSS:

.menu ul ul {
    display: none;
}

.menu ul li:hover > ul {
    display: block;
}

The greater than character (>) is used to represent a ‘direct descendent’ relationship of the proceeding character. In your case the CSS wouldn’t be on hover.

First of let me remind you that i’m not talking about at normal dropdown-menu, but a dynamic menu stucture
So lets say i’m using css, i still would need to to know what branch to show and hide, hence i would need to modify the css on the fly either by php or javascript

I know i could solve my problem with javascript, but would like to try a server-side version

So the menu you’re creating doesn’t have a typical menu-child relationship? That’s what a normal navigation menu has:
– Parent item
— Child item

Can I ask, what have you got at the moment? It sounds a bit up-in-the-air.

When I say “menu-child relationship”, note that this is only what is relevant for CSS. The HTML should already be rendered in the page. At the CSS stage, you don’t care what is shown in the menu items, you only care about the HTML relationships.