Menu Builder

[kongondo]

Menu Builder
 

As of 29 December 2017 ProcessWire versions earlier than 3.x are not supported

Modules Directory
Project Page
Read Me (How to install, use, etc..)

For highly customisable menus, please see this post.

If you want a navigation that mirrors your ProcessWire page tree, the system allows you to easily create recursive menus using either vanilla PHP or Soma's great MarkupSimpleNavigation. In some cases, however, you may wish to create menus that:
1. Do not mirror you site's page tree (hirarchies and ancestry); and
2. You can add custom links (external to your site) to.

That is primarily where Menu Builder comes in. It is also helpful if you:
3. Prefer creating menus via drag and drop
4. Have a need for menus (or other listings) that will be changing regularly or that you want to allow your admin users to edit.

The issue of custom menus is not new here in the forums. The difference is that this module allows you to easily create such menus via drag and drop in the Admin. Actually, you can even use it to just create some list if you wanted to. In the backend, the module uses the jQueryUI plugin nestedSortable by Manuele J Sarfatti for the drag and drop and is inspired in part by the WP Custom Menu feature.
 
Please read the Read Me completely before using this module. 

For Complex or highly-customised menus, it is recommended to use the getMenuItems() method as detailed in this post.
 
Features

• Ability to create menus that do not mirror your ProcessWire Page Tree hierarchy/structure
• Menus can contain both ProcessWire pages and custom links
• Create menu hierarchies and nesting via drag and drop
• Easily add CSS IDs and Classes to each menu item on creating the menu items (both custom and from ProcessWire pages) or post creation.
• Optionally set custom links to open in a new tab
• Change menu item titles built from ProcessWire pages (without affecting the original page). E.g. if you have a page titled 'About Us' but you want the menu item title to be 'About'
• Readily view the structure and settings for each menu item
• Menus stored as pages (note: just the menu, not the items!)
• Menu items stored as JSON in a field in the menu pages (empty values not stored)
• Add menu items from ProcessWire pages using page fields (option to choose between PageAutocomplete and AsmSelect [default]) or a Selector (e.g. template=basic-page, limit=20, sort=title).
• For page fields, you can specify a selector to return only those specified pages for selection in the page field (i.e. asm and autocomplete)
• For superusers, optionally allow markup in your menu titles, e.g. <span>About</span>
• Menu settings for nestedSortable - e.g. maxLevels (limit nesting levels)
• Advanced features (e.g. add pages via selector, menu settings) currently permissible to superadmins only (may change to be permission-based)
• Delete single or all menu items without deleting the menu itself
• Lock down menus for editing
• Highly configurable MarkupMenuBuilder - e.g. can pass menu id, title, name or array to render(); Passing an array means you can conditionally manipulate it before rendering, e.g. make certain menu branches visible only to certain users [the code is up to you!] 
• Optionally grab menu items only (as a Menu object WireArray or a normal array) and use your own code to create custom highly complex menus to meet any need.
• More...

In the backend, ProcessMenuBuilder does the menu creation. For the frontend, menus are displayed using MarkupMenuBuilder.

Credits

In this module's infancy (way back!), I wanted to know more about ProcessWire modules as well as improve my PHP skills. As they say, what better way to learn than to actually create something? So, I developed this module (instead of writing PW tutorials as promised, tsk, tsk, naughty, naughty!) in my own summer of code . Props to Wanze, Soma, Pete, Antti and Ryan whose modules I studied (read copied ) to help in my module development and to Teppo for his wonderful write-up on the "Anatomy of fields in ProcessWire" that vastly improved my knowledge and understanding of how PW works. Diogo and marcus for idea about using pages (rather than a custom db table), onjegolders for his helpful UI comments, Martijn Geerts, OrganizedFellow, dazzyweb and Mike Anthony for 'pushing me' to complete this module and netcarver for help with the code.
 
Screens

Edited December 29, 2017 by kongondo
ProcessWire 3.x support only

[Martijn Geerts]

I love it.

I said before: "I like it that way, PLEASE stay talkin' on the forums"

Now I think, stay away from the forums and go code for us

[Marty Walker]

Hugely impressed!

[onjegolders]

Very impressive Kongondo, looks great.

If there were a way of combining the two steps into one (adding new items & arranging items) I think it would be a better experience for the user. 

1) Add a new item

2) Choose from a dropdown whether it's a native page or external

3) Add item and item details.

I can understand that with required fields it may be harder to achieve all of this from within the item boxes.

The other slight improvement would be if the page tree remains open when an item has been clicked?

But it already looks like a great addition to PW

PS Love the music!

[kongondo]

Thanks all!

@onjegolders,

Good ideas, thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them. 

music = Fourplay  - "Pineapple Getaway"

[ryan]

Awesome work Kongondo! Very impressive seeing it in action from your video too. 

Regarding the help-please section and security: is the Process tool intended primarily for superuser/developer use, or something that would be available to non-superusers? If exclusive to superusers (as many admin/developer helper tools can be), security becomes a much simpler task because we already assume they have access to do whatever they want. If not exclusive to superusers, then there's more to consider. With regards to SQL queries, it looks like you are doing a good job of sanitizing everything that gets bundled into a query. But for any string values, you might also want to run them through $str=$db->escape_string($str); just to complete it with the DB driver's own sanitization method. It's probably not technically necessary in any of the instances I saw, but it's just a good practice either way. Of course, you can also use numbered parameters in mysqli to avoid that issue, but I don't care for mysqli's implementation of this and generally don't use it (on the other hand, PDO's named parameters are great). 

[Macrura]

@kongondo - do you think it would be ok to use this on a production site? I have to make a custom menu for a new site, and before i go and do it with pages, i wanted to maybe consider using this..

[kongondo]

Hi Macrura,

Sorry not to have picked this up sooner. I wouldn't use this on a live site just yet, mainly because the user has no way (yet) to delete individual menu items via the GUI. Unfortunately, I don't see myself having time to continue working on this until the end of the year most likely. Please feel free to explore a workaround or adapt it to your needs though, if you wish. Thanks. 

Cheers,

/k

[kongondo]

@Ryan,

Thanks for your comments. The original plan was to let non-superusers with the right permissions also use the module. This would enable them to build their own navigation systems easily, a la WP. However, besides security, that could lead to other issues such as wanton addition of menu items! I haven't made a final decision yet. We'll see.

[Macrura]

@kongondo thank you - i did just go ahead and use my normal way of managing menus which is by setting up a menu page tree and then coding the output manually;

Welcome Back!

[OrganizedFellow]

How's progress on this coming along?

It's been a while since you last mentioned it.

[kongondo]

Yeah, incidentally I mentioned this elsewhere today. I got stuck on some recursive function . It's not high on my priority list atm but will have a rethink at some point...

[dazzyweb]

@kongondo This looks great.

Have you done any more work on this?

[kongondo]

No, sorry...I haven't. I didn't really think there would be interest....Hmm...I'll make a decision this week. If I take it up again I would have to change a few things now that I am a little bit wiser...We'll see.

[Mike Rockett]

I, for one, would love a solid module that handles menu management. I have a large site coming up in a month or so that would require it. Automatic menu generation doesn't sit so well for me - so this is a must have. If you decide to not do it, then I'm sure I can make use of a page structure under admin to mimic the functionality... But, I think a dedicated module is better - especially for the client, who needs to be able to modify certain menus as and when needed.

[dazzyweb]

I, for one, would love a solid module that handles menu management.

Me too.

[kongondo]

OK, we are on. I have resumed work on this and taken a newish approach. Hope to post something by end of play tomorrow...

[Mike Rockett]

 

[kongondo]

Almost done; mainly waiting for an answer about this:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7870-asmselect-pagefield-modify-selected-options-order-in-select-dropdown/?p=88609

[kongondo]

Update: Menu Builder Version 0.0.2 is now available.
 
I'll update the original post later + post a new video.
 
Main Changes:

• Beta status
• Menus stored as pages (note: just the menu, not the items!)
• Menu items stored as JSON in a field in the menu pages (empty values not stored)
• Add menu items from ProcessWire pages using page fields (option to choose between PageAutocomplete and AsmSelect [default]) or a Selector (e.g. template=basic-page, limit-20).
• For page fields, you can specify a selector to return only those specified pages for selection in the page field (i.e. asm and autocomplete)
• For page fields, now you can also add css classes and IDs as you add the items
• Menu settings for nestedSortable - e.g. maxLevels (limit nesting levels)
• Advanced features (e.g. add pages via selector, menu settings) currently permissible to superadmins only (may change to be permission-based)
• Delete single or all menu items without deleting the menu itself
• Lock down menus for editing
• Highly configurable MarkupMenuBuilder - e.g. can pass menu id, title, name or array to render(); Passing an array means you can conditionally manipulate it before rendering, e.g. make certain menu branches visible only to certain users [untested and the code is up to you!] 
• More...

Note:

• Some nestedSortable features not yet implemented/working (some are not really necessary actually).
• The module creates 3 fields (menu_items, menu_pages, menu_settings) and 1 template (menus). 
• Menu pages are stored as children under the modules parent page (admin/setup/menu-builder/) - so not accessible in the frontend

Issues:
Drag and drop (ordering menu items) is some times finicky...something in the js I think or just my mouse.
 

Edited March 9, 2015 by kongondo

[adrian]

I haven't tested yet, but it looks very impressive - awesome job!

[Mike Rockett]

Indeed, it looks great! Going to test it out shortly. 

[dazzyweb]

I just tested it and it's very nice.

I want to put a class on the menu submenu so on nested unordered list. Is there an option for this?

For example <ul class="submenu">

[Mike Rockett]

This is just what I needed - works brilliantly, and is easy to use. I do have a few suggestions, though:

1. It would be nice to have compatibility for the <nav> tag - I use them in my menus instead of unordered lists.
   
2. Also, I should be able to add a class and/or an ID to each menu.
   
3. Lastly, it would be great if I could add a class to sub-menu <ul> as well as any menu-item <li>
   

Otherwise, this is fantastic - thank you

Edit: Dazzyweb beat me to it! 

[dazzyweb]

@Mike Anthony Regarding suggestion 2: I think you could add a different class and/or ID to each menu by creating another differently named options array and give a different name for menu_css_id and menu_css_class then use these options in your other menu.