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Laravel Menu

A quick and easy way to create menus in Laravel 6, 7 and 8

For Laravel 4.x, check version 1.5.0

Documentation

• Installation
• Getting Started
• Routing
  • URLs
  • Named Routes
  • Controller Actions
  • HTTPS
• Sub-items
• Set Item's ID Manualy
• Set Item's Nicknames Manualy
• Referring to Items
  • Get Item by Title
  • Get Item by Id
  • Get All Items
  • Get the First Item
  • Get the Last Item
  • Get the Active Item
  • Get Sub-items of the Item
  • Get the Parent of the Item
  • Magic Where Methods
• Referring to Menu Objects
• HTML Attributes
• Manipulating Links
  • Link's Href Property
• Active Item
  • RESTful URLs
  • URL Wildcards
  • Disable activation
• Inserting a Separator
• Append and Prepend
• Before and After
• Raw Items
• Menu Groups
• URL Prefixing
• Nested Groups
• Meta Data
• Filtering the Items
• Sorting the Items
• Rendering Methods
  • Menu as Unordered List
  • Menu as Ordered List
  • Menu as Div
  • Menu as Bootstrap 3 Navbar
  • Adding class attributes to child items
• Subset Menus
  • Top Menu
  • Sub Menu
  • Sibling Menu
  • Crumb Menu
• Advanced Usage
  • A Basic Example
  • Control Structure for Blade
    • @lm_attrs
  • Attributes and Callback function of item
• Configuration
• If You Need Help
• Contributing
• License

Installation

If you are in Laravel 5.5 you won't need to edit your config/app.php, if you are in a previous version of Laravel, please do the following:

Append Laravel Menu service provider to providers array in config/app.php.

At the end of config/app.php add 'Menu' => Lavary\Menu\Facade::class to the $aliases array:

This registers the package with Laravel and creates an alias called Menu.

To use your own settings, publish config.

Getting Started

You can define the menu definitions inside a laravel middleware. As a result anytime a request hits your application, the menu objects will be available to all your views.

Be sure to also add the middleware to the app\Http\Kernel.php

Open the middleware you just created app\Http\Middleware\GenerateMenus.php

Then add a basic menu declaration. For example:

Finally, open a view and add:

Your menu will be created and displayed on the page.

Note: $MyNavBar is just a hypothetical name used in these examples; You may name your menus whatever you please.

In the above example Menu::make() creates a menu named MyNavBar, Adds the menu instance to the Menu::collection and ultimately makes $myNavBar object available across all application views.

This method accepts a callable inside which you can define your menu items. add method defines a new item. It receives two parameters, the first one is the item title and the second one is options.

The second parameter, options, can be a simple string representing a URL or an associative array of options and HTML attributes which we'll discuss shortly.

You can use Menu::exists() to check if the menu already exists.

You can use Menu::makeOnce() to ensure the make callback is only called if a menu by the given name does not yet exist. This can be useful if you are creating the same menu in multiple places conditionally, and are unsure whether other conditions have caused the menu to be created already.

To render the menu in your view:

Laravel-menu provides three rendering methods out of the box. However you can create your own rendering method using the right methods and attributes.

As noted earlier, laravel-menu provides three rendering formats out of the box, asUl(), asOl() and asDiv(). You can read about the details here.

You can also access the menu object via the menu collection:

This will render your menu like so:

And that's all about it!

Routing

URLs

You can simply assign a URL to your menu item by passing the URL as the second argument to add method:

Named Routes

laravel-menu supports named routes as well:

This time instead of passing a simple string to add(), we pass an associative with key route and a named route as value:

Controller Actions

Laravel Menu supports controller actions as well.

You will just need to set action key of your options array to a controller action:

Suppose we have these routes defined in our routes/web.php or the older app/Http/routes.php file:

Then to refer to this route, we can pass the action into the options array.

Additionaly: if you need to send some parameters to routes, URLs or controller actions as a query string, you can simply include them in an array along with the route, action or URL value:

HTTPS

By default, the HTTP vs HTTPS will be determined by Laravel's UrlGenerator which matches the current schema of the page.

If you need to overwrite this behavior, call secure() on the item's link attribute to force https. Alternatively add key secure to the options array and set it to true:

The output as <ul> would be:

Sub-items

Items can have sub-items too:

You can also chain the item definitions and go as deep as you wish:

It is possible to add sub items directly using parent attribute:

Set Item's ID Manually

When you add a new item, a unique ID is automatically assigned to the item. However, there are time when you're loading the menu items from the database and you have to set the ID manually. To handle this, you can call the id() method against the item's object and pass your desired ID:

Alternatively, you can pass the ID as an element of the options array when adding the menu item:

Set Item's Nickname Manually

When you add a new item, a nickname is automatically assigned to the item for further reference. This nickname is the camel-cased form of the item's title. For instance, an item with the title: About Us would have the nickname: aboutUs. However there are times when you have to explicitly define your menu items owing to a special character set you're using. To do this, you may simply use the nickname() method against the item's object and pass your desired nickname to it:

Alternatively, you can pass the nickname as an element of the options array:

Referring to Items

You can access defined items throughout your code using the methods described below.

Get Item by Title

Use $menu followed by the item's title in camel case:

As an example, let's insert a divider after About us item after we've defined it:

If you're not comfortable with the above method you can store the item's object reference in a variable for further reference:

Get Item By Id

You can also get an item by Id if needed:

Get All Items

The all() method returns a Laravel Collection.

Get the First Item

Get the Last Item

Get the Active Item

Get Sub-Items of the Item

First of all you need to get the item using the methods described above then call children() on it.

To get children of About item:

children() returns a Laravel Collection.

To check if an item has any children or not, you can use hasChildren()

To get all descendants of an item you may use all:

Get the Parent of the Item

First get the item using one of the methods above then call parent() on it.

To get the parent of About item

To check if an item has a parent or not, you can use hasParent()

Magic Where Methods

You can also search the items collection by magic where methods. These methods are consisted of a where concatenated with a property (object property or even meta data)

For example to get an item with parent equal to 12, you can use it like so:

Or to get item's with a specific meta data:

This method returns a Laravel collection.

If you need to fetch descendants of the matched items as well, Just set the second argument as true.

This will give all items with color red and their decsendants.

Referring to Menu Instances

You might encounter situations when you need to refer to menu instances out of the builder context.

To get a specific menu by name:

Or to get all menus instances:

You can also call getCollection() to get the same result:

Both methods return a Laravel Collection

HTML Attributes

Since all menu items would be rendered as HTML entities like list items or divs, you can define as many HTML attributes as you need for each item:

If we choose HTML lists as our rendering format like ul, the result would be something similar to this:

It is also possible to set or get HTML attributes after the item has been defined using attr() method.

If you call attr() with one argument, it will return the attribute value for you. If you call it with two arguments, It will consider the first and second parameters as a key/value pair and sets the attribute. You can also pass an associative array of attributes if you need to add a group of HTML attributes in one step; Lastly if you call it without any arguments it will return all the attributes as an array.

You can use attr on a collection, if you need to target a group of items:

Manipulating Links

All the HTML attributes will go to the wrapping tags(li, div, etc); You might encounter situations when you need to add some HTML attributes to <a> tags as well.

Each Item instance has an attribute which stores an instance of Link object. This object is provided for you to manipulate <a> tags.

Just like each item, Link also has an attr() method which functions exactly like item's:

Link's Href Property

If you don't want to use the routing feature of laravel-menu or you don't want the builder to prefix your URL with anything (your host address for example), you can explicitly set your link's href property:

Active Item

You can mark an item as activated using active() on that item:

You can also add class active to the anchor element instead of the wrapping element (div or li):

Laravel Menu does this for you automatically according to the current URI the time you register the item.

You can also choose the element to be activated (item or the link) in settings.php which resides in package's config directory:

RESTful URLs

RESTful URLs are also supported as long as restful option is set as true in config/settings.php file, E.g. menu item with url resource will be activated by resource/slug or resource/slug/edit.

You might encounter situations where your app is in a sub directory instead of the root directory or your resources have a common prefix; In such case you need to set rest_base option to a proper prefix for a better restful activation support. rest_base can take a simple string, array of string or a function call as value.

URL Wildcards

laravel-menu makes you able to define a pattern for a certain item, if the automatic activation can't help:

So this-is-another-url, this-is-another-url/and-another will both activate Articles item.

Disable activation

Sometimes you may need to disable auto activation for single items. You can pass disableActivationByURL in options like this:

This prevents auto activation by matching URL. But activation for items with active children keeps working.

Inserting a Separator

You can insert a separator after each item using divide() method:

divide() also gets an associative array of attributes:

Append and Prepend

You can append or prepend HTML or plain-text to each item's title after it is defined:

The above code will result:

You can call prepend and append on collections as well.

Before and After

Allows you to add an arbitrary html block instead of a drop-down list. And many other possibilities. Unlike append and prepend, before and after adds an arbitrary html to the root of the tag li.

Resource of view, pattern: layouts.pattern.menu.user_info

The above code will result:

Raw Items

To insert items as plain text instead of hyper-links you can use raw():

Menu Groups

Sometimes you may need to share attributes between a group of items. Instead of specifying the attributes and options for each item, you may use a menu group feature:

PS: This feature works exactly like Laravel group routes.

Attributes style and data-role would be applied to both About and Services items:

URL Prefixing

Just like Laravel route prefixing feature, a group of menu items may be prefixed by using the prefix option in the array being passed to the group.

Attention: Prefixing only works on the menu items addressed with url but not route or action.

This will generate:

Nested Groups

Laravel Menu supports nested grouping feature as well. A menu group merges its own attribute with its parent group then shares them between its wrapped items:

If we render it as a ul:

Meta Data

You might encounter situations when you need to attach some meta data to each item; This data can be anything from item placement order to permissions required for accessing the item; You can do this by using data() method.

data() method works exactly like attr() method:

If you call data() with one argument, it will return the data value for you. If you call it with two arguments, It will consider the first and second parameters as a key/value pair and sets the data. You can also pass an associative array of data if you need to add a group of key/value pairs in one step; Lastly if you call it without any arguments it will return all data as an array.

You can also access a data as if it's a property:

Meta data don't do anything to the item and won't be rendered in HTML either. It is the developer who would decide what to do with them.

You can use data on a collection, if you need to target a group of items:

Filtering the Items

We can filter menu items by a using filter() method. Filter() receives a closure which is defined by you.It then iterates over the items and run your closure on each of them.

You must return false for items you want to exclude and true for those you want to keep.

Let's proceed with a real world scenario:

I suppose your User model can check whether the user has an specific permission or not:

As you might have noticed we attached the required permission for each item using data().

As result, Users item will be visible to those who has the manage_users permission.

Sorting the Items

laravel-menu can sort the items based on either a user defined function or a key which can be item properties like id,parent,etc or meta data stored with each item.

To sort the items based on a property and or meta data:

sortBy() also receives a second parameter which specifies the ordering direction: Ascending order(asc) and Descending Order(dsc).

Default value is asc.

To sort the items based on Id in descending order:

Sorting the items by passing a closure:

The closure takes the items collection as argument.

Rendering Methods

Several rendering formats are available out of the box:

Menu as Unordered List

asUl() will render your menu in an unordered list. it also takes an optional parameter to define attributes for the <ul> tag itself:

Result:

Menu as Ordered List

asOl() method will render your menu in an ordered list. it also takes an optional parameter to define attributes for the <ol> tag itself:

Result:

Menu as Div

asDiv() method will render your menu as nested HTML divs. it also takes an optional parameter to define attributes for the parent <div> tag itself:

Result:

Menu as Bootstrap 3 Navbar

Laravel Menu provides a parital view out of the box which generates menu items in a bootstrap friendly style which you can include in your Bootstrap based navigation bars:

You can access the partial view by config('laravel-menu.views.bootstrap-items').

All you need to do is to include the partial view and pass the root level items to it:

This is how your Bootstrap code is going to look like:

In case you are using bootstrap 5 (currently in beta) you need to set the data-toggle-attribute option from data-toggle to data-bs-toggle in your config/laravel-menu/settings.php.

Adding class attributes to child items

Like adding a class to the menu ul and ol, classes can be added the submenu too. The three parameters to asUl are arrays as follows:

• The first array is the attributes for the list: for example, ul
• The second is the attributes for the child lists, for example, ul>li>ul
• The third array is attributes that are added to the attributes of the li element

With this you can add a class to the child menu (submenu) like this:

Subset Menus

With your menu constructed you can call any of our subset menu functions to get a new Builder to quick generate additional menus.

Top Menu

This generates a Builder of the top level items, items without a parent.

Sub Menu

This generates a Builder of the immediate children of the active item.

Sibling Menu

This generates a Builder of the siblings of the active item.

Crumb Menu

This generates a Builder by recursively getting all of the parent items for the active item (including the active item).

Advanced Usage

As noted earlier you can create your own rendering formats.

A Basic Example

If you'd like to render your menu(s) according to your own design, you should create two views.

• View-1 This view contains all the HTML codes like nav or ul or div tags wrapping your menu items.
• View-2 This view is actually a partial view responsible for rendering menu items (it is going to be included in View-1.)

The reason we use two view files here is that View-2 calls itself recursively to render the items to the deepest level required in multi-level menus.

Let's make this easier with an example:

In this example we name View-1 custom-menu.blade.php and View-2 custom-menu-items.blade.php.

custom-menu.blade.php

custom-menu-items.blade.php

Let's describe what we did above, In custom-menus.blade.php we put whatever HTML boilerplate code we had according to our design, then we included custom-menu-items.blade.php and passed the menu items at root level to custom-menu-items.blade.php:

In custom-menu-items.blade.php we ran a foreach loop and called the file recursively in case the current item had any children.

To put the rendered menu in your application template, you can simply include custom-menu view in your master layout.

Control Structure For Blade

Laravel menu extends Blade to handle special layouts.

@lm_attrs

You might encounter situations when some of your HTML properties are explicitly written inside your view instead of dynamically being defined when adding the item; However you will need to merge these static attributes with your Item's attributes.

In the above snippet the li tag has class dropdown and data-test property explicitly defined in the view; Laravel Menu provides a control structure which takes care of this.

Suppose the item has also several attributes dynamically defined when being added:

The view:

This control structure automatically merges the static HTML properties with the dynamically defined properties.

Here's the result:

Attributes and Callback function of item

When printing a list, you can: Set the attributes for the list element; Set the callback function, to add a prefix to each link or by condition ("?id={$id}") and much more.

• Example of converting a menu into a drop-down list for mobile

Controller:

View: layouts.table.view

• Example of printing the recording management menu

Controller:

View: layouts.table.view (use in a cycle with different IDs)

Configuration

You can adjust the behavior of the menu builder in config/settings.php file. Currently it provide a few options out of the box:

• auto_activate Automatically activates menu items based on the current URI
• activate_parents Activates the parents of an active item
• active_class Default CSS class name for active items
• restful Activates RESTful URLS. E.g resource/slug will activate item with resource url.
• cascade_data If you need descendants of an item to inherit meta data from their parents, make sure this option is enabled.
• rest_base The base URL that all restful resources might be prefixed with.
• active_element You can choose the HTML element to which you want to add activation classes (anchor or the wrapping element).

You're also able to override the default settings for each menu. To override settings for menu, just add the lower-cased menu name as a key in the settings array and add the options you need to override:

Alternatively, you can override the default settings with the following methods. Or you can add new custom settings to the menu.

Example 1:

Override default settings

Example 2:

Add new settings specific to the menu.

Example 3:

Add custom settings and get the rest of the settings from MySidebar.

Example 4:

Override all settings (including default settings) and add new ones.

Example 5:

Or you can use it like this

If You Need Help

Please submit all issues and questions using GitHub issues and I will try to help you.

Contributing

Please feel free to submit pull requests if you can improve or add any features.

We are currently using PSR-2+Symfony formatting. This is easy to implement and check with the PHP Coding Standards Fixer.

Once you have installed php-cs-fixer and added it to your path, simply run the following command in the laravel-menu folder prior to committing.

While everyone has different opinions on formatting, this tool will help provide convenient consistency.

Credits

• Dustin Graham
• Reza Lavarian
• All Contributors

License

Laravel-Menu is free software distributed under the terms of the MIT license.