Menu builder for Laravel

Why?

There are some great Menu builders out there already, but this has some extra features that make it really cool and handy to use

What?

A Menu bundle that will make managing links a breeze! This Menu bundle allows you to have Menu Containers, they basically allow you to make multiple Menus. As an added bonus, you interact with Menu Containers via a Menu Handler

Menu Handlers allow you to interact with multiple Menu Containers at once, or render multiple containers at once.

Don't let this scare you off, the interface for working with all these things is very simple!

How?

Example use

Let's say we have 2 roles, reseller and store owner

In the backend (domain.com/backend/...) of our application we have some controllers.

• accounts (shows some customer accounts for resellers, and some store manager accounts for store owners)

• pages (shows all the pages for a store, only available for store owners)

Now we want to build a menu for our backend, but since every role gets different pages, we are going to use a menu container for every role.

	<?php
	Menu::handler(array('storeowner', 'reseller'))
		->add('backend/accounts', 'Accounts');
	
	Menu::handler('storeowner')
		->add('backend/pages', 'Pages');

	echo Menu::handler('reseller');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a>
	 *     </li>
	 * </ul>
	 */


	echo Menu::handler('storeowner');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a></li>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/pages">Pages</a></li>
	 * </ul>
	*/

As you can see, we added items to 2 different menu containers, and we interacted with them via a handler.

That was simple, but we don't have to specify "backend/" for every single url, we can simplify this by adding ´->prefix('backend')´ when showing the menu.

By doing this, every link (including subs) will be prefixed with the given string, and a "/" will automatically be added to the end.

	<?php
	Menu::handler(array('storeowner', 'reseller'))
		->add('accounts', 'Accounts');
	
	Menu::handler('storeowner')
		->add('pages', 'Pages');

	echo Menu::handler('reseller')->prefix('backend');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a>
	 *     </li>
	 * </ul>
	 */


	echo Menu::handler('storeowner')->prefix('backend');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a></li>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/pages">Pages</a></li>
	 * </ul>
	*/

What if we want the url prefix to be the container name? we can do that by adding ->prefix_container() at the end

	<?php
	Menu::handler('storeowner')
		->add('accounts', 'Accounts');
	
	Menu::handler('storeowner')
		->add('pages', 'Pages');

	echo Menu::handler('reseller')->prefix_container();
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/reseller/accounts">Accounts</a>
	 *     </li>
	 * </ul>
	 */


	echo Menu::handler('storeowner');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/storeowner/accounts">Accounts</a></li>
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/storeowner/pages">Pages</a></li>
	 * </ul>
	*/

Here is an example that shows you how to add children to a menu, how to set some additional attributes for the link and list item and how to specify a custom listitem element type. Wow that was a lot! Just take a close look at the example ;)

	<?php
	Menu::handler(array('storeowner', 'reseller'))
		->add('accounts', 'Accounts', Menu::items()
			->add('accounts/add', 'Add Account', null, array('class' => 'link'), array('class' => 'listitem'), 'dt')
		);
	
	$pages_subs = Menu::items()->add('pages/add', 'Add Page');
	Menu::handler('storeowner')
		->add('pages', 'Pages', $pages_subs);

	echo Menu::handler('reseller')->prefix('backend');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a>
	 *         <ul>
	 *             <dt class="listitem"><a class="link" href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts/add">Add Account</a></dt>
	 *         </ul>
	 *     </li>
	 * </ul>
	 */


	echo Menu::handler('storeowner')->prefix('backend');
	/* returns:
	 * <ul>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a>
	 *         <ul>
	 *             <dt class="listitem"><a class="link" href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts/add">Add Account</a></dt>
	 *         </ul>
	 *     </li>
	 *     <li>
	 *         <a href="http://domain.com/backend/pages">Pages</a>
	 *         <ul>
	 *             <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/pages/add">Add Page</a></li>
	 *         </ul>
	 *     </li>
	 * </ul>
	 */

Instead of using "echo Menu::handler('reseller');" you can also use the render method and add some attributes to the list and use a custom element type

In this example, we use an "ol" (ordered list) element in stead of the default "ul" element and add the class "nav" to it

	<?php
	Menu::handler('reseller')->add('accounts', 'Accounts');

	echo Menu::handler('reseller')->prefix('backend')->render(array('class' => 'nav'), 'ol');
	/* returns:
	 * <ol class="nav">
	 *     <li><a href="http://domain.com/backend/accounts">Accounts</a></li>
	 * </ol>
	*/

This Menu builder will automatically add a "active" class to a list item in case the URL matches, and will add an "active-children" class to all items that have a child item that is active.

Enjoy it, improvements are welcome!