Add class to link in wp_list_pages - php

Question

I'm trying to create a hover-effect on a list-item within the wp_list_pages() function. I'm creating a theme for Wordpress, but can't seem to get the hover effect working. I'm pretty new at this, so bear with me.
My css looks like this:
a.nav:hover { color: yellow; }
So for my html-code I add the "nav"-class to my links, like this:
<ul class="nav">
<li><a class="nav" href="#">HOME</a></li>
</ul>
This works, it changes the color of the link to yellow. So far so good.
But when I try to change this html-code to php-code the class isn't there.
I use the wp_list_pages() function, like this:
<ul class="nav">
<?PHP wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&exclude='); ?>
</ul>
And the outcome then is:
<ul class="nav">
<li class="page_item page-item-23">HOME</li></ul>
So my question is, how to I add the nav class to this link? Is there an attribute within the function or something? Again, I'm really new to this

Answer 1

from the wordpress docs for wp_list_pages() http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_list_pages#Markup_and_styling_of_page_items :
ll list items (li) generated by wp_list_pages() are marked with the class page_item. When wp_list_pages() is called while displaying a Page, the list item for that Page is given the additional class current_page_item.
with that, the easiest thing you can do is to just change your hover code to:
li.page_item:hover { color: yellow; }

Answer 2

Have a look at this.
Quote: "Add the following line to your theme's functions.php template file, and it will add a class attribute of "tag" to each link generated by wp_list_pages():
add_filter('wp_list_pages', create_function('$t', 'return str_replace("<a ", "<a class=\"tag\" ", $t);'));

Answer 3

I think that the proper way change the default class of a wp_list_pages function is this:
// add to functions.php
// add classes to wp_list_pages
function wp_list_pages_filter($output) {
$output = str_replace('page_item', 'page_item new-class', $output);
return $output;
}
add_filter('wp_list_pages', 'wp_list_pages_filter');

Answer 4

What if I have a different looks on each pages then I have to call only a specific class. The example below is the best way that worked for me.
page.index:
<aside class="menu-side">
<ul class="side-nav-list">
<li>
<!-- First child ( title of the page) -->
<?php the_title() ?>
</li>
<?php
if($theParent){
$findChildOf = $theParent;
}else{
$findChildOf = get_the_ID();
}
wp_list_pages(array(
'title_li' => NULL,
'child_of' => $findChildOf,
))
?>
</ul>
</aside>
CSS file:
.side-nav-list li a:link,
.side-nav-list li a:visited {
display: block;
padding: 1.6rem 1.2rem;
color: #2d234b;}