Re: Better way of doing this? (menu and submenus)

Quoting Ryan A <genphp@yahoo.com>:

Hello, First off, I admit this is not going to be as interesting as the "helping someone" thread, and hopefully there is not going to be any talk of DDOS or flaming :-p Ok, here goes, I have never done anything _exactly_ like this but since typo 3 has this kind of functionality (and i have never used typo 3 myself) I'm guessing some of you would be able to help me out, or guide me...If i'm wrong, just ignore this thread. Heres what i have; I have a table with the main (parent) categories and another table with the sub-categories (children) which will/is supposed to be "compiled" into a navigation menu and then be displayed on the left side of each and every page on the site. There are around 15 parents and X children under each parent, children content have upto 10 links on their own pages. I was thinking of passing three valiables on each page for the above: parent_id (int) display_children (1=yes 0=no) active_sub-menu (string or int, depending on the DB structure) and accordingly build and display the menu. Am I on the right track or missing something? Advise, links and suggestions welcome. Thanks! Ryan

Ryan, I have run into a similar problem with one of the sites I'm designing. Here's the approach I took. You can see if it fits your needs. I have only 1 database table of menu items. That table is defined as such: menu_item_id name parent_id location By doing it this way, you are able to have a dynamic number of menu items and your menu structure is very flexible. Here's an example of what I have:

MID  NAME        PARENT_ID  LOCATION
1    Home        <null>     index.php
2    Products    <null>     products.php
3    Information <null>     info.php
10   Profile     1          profile.php
11   Account     1          account.php
20   Hardware    2          hardware.php
21   Software    2          software.php
210  M$ Word     21         msword.php
211  iLife       21         ilife.php

And I think you get the drift. The first 3 are the main menu items. Then Home has 2 children and Products has 2 children. Then Software (under Products) has two children. You can keep getting deeper in the tree structure and not have to worry about adding more tables. Notice that the menu_item_id (MID) actually has some organization to it, but this is completely optional. As the menu items grow, this will probably be more difficult to keep track of. Anyway, hope that helps! ~Philip