is_active_sidebar not working with this plugin.

In case anyone else is struggling with this, I wrote this function as an alternative to is_active_sidebar() for the Display Widgets plugin. The comments explain it all. Stick this in your functions.php file, and then use has_visible_widgets() instead of is_active_sidebar().

/* The Display Widgets plugin doesn't update
 * is_active_sidebar() for hidden widgets.
 * This function tests dynamic_sidebar() to
 * see if it is empty. Use instead of
 * is_active_sidebar() to determine if the
 * sidebar has any widgets. Remember to
 * change back to is_active_sidebar() if no
 * longer using Display Widgets.
 */
function has_visible_widgets( $sidebar_id ) {

    // First check if sidebar has any widgets
    if ( is_active_sidebar($sidebar_id) ) {
        // Use PHP output buffer to load
        // the sidebar into a variable
        ob_start();
        dynamic_sidebar($sidebar_id);
        $sidebar = ob_get_contents();
        ob_end_clean();
        // Return false if sidebar is empty
        if ($sidebar == "") return false;
    } else {
        return false;
    }

    // Return true if sidebar is not empty
    return true;

}

mattscottdesign, thank you thank you! I needed a way of adding a body class ONLY if a certain sidebar was explicitly present on each page. This allowed me to do it.

Many thanks for following up and posting this solution.

Mattscottdesign, thanks so much.
@ SpankMarvin: would you mind to share your solution?

I’d love to do something similar to what you described.
Thanks in advance
G.

My code is here:

https://pastebin.com/QHLSxvse

Basically, it hooks into wp_head, runs the function above, and if it returns true, it adds a class to the body tag. This allows me to adjust the width of my content areas accordingly with CSS. There would be other more straightforward solutions but I had to work with this due to the way a developer had setup the sidebars to work.

Hope this helps.

J

Awesome! Thanks so much… this makes the day!!

is_active_sidebar() is now supported in v2.0. Enjoy!