How do I dynamically change the title of a menu link?

Question

I made a menu in administration, structures, menu. I want to change the title, as it appears on the menu, of one of the links based on the gender of the currently logged in user.

I have found several answers to similar questions but I can't figure out how to implement the solutions. Some of them suggest using hook_menu_alter(&$items) and a separate callback function, but I don't understand the structure of $items. I was hoping to just print out the value of $items, find the string I wanted to change, and change that value in $items in the hook. Apparently, though, you can't debug the $items variable because hook_menu_alter is rarely called. I tried to figure out the structure of $items from a bunch of other questions and answers and I found stuff like this:

$items['user/%user_category/edit']['title']

Why is 'title' a property of a path? Does this mean that every menu on your site that has a link to that path will display the title that you set the above variable to? What if you wanted a link to a specific path on one menu to have a different label than a link to that path on another menu? Isn't there somewhere I can access and change the title of a menu link like this

$allMenuData['My Custom Menu']['an item on my menu']['title']

Answer 1

You might try hook_preprocess_menu_link()

function MYTHEME_preprocess_menu_link(&$variables) {
    global $user;

    if (isset($variables['element']['#original_link']['menu_name'])
        && $variables['element']['#original_link']['menu_name'] == 'my-menu-machine-name'
        && $variables['element']['#title'] == 'ORIGINAL LINK TITLE') {

        $new_title = (check for gender) ? 'New title 1' : 'New title 2';
        $variables['element']['#title'] = $new_title;
    }
}

Fill in your menu machine name, the title you want to change, the conditional for the gender and the new titles depending on the gender value.