eKini Web Developer Blog » navigation http://blog.ekini.net Wenbert Del Rosario: PHP, MySQL, Javascript, MVC, Zend Framework, AJAX, jQuery. Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:13:42 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Zend Framework: Navigation and Breadcrumbs with an XML File in ZF 1.8 http://blog.ekini.net/2009/06/10/zend-framework-navigation-and-breadcrumbs-with-an-xml-file-in-zf-18/ http://blog.ekini.net/2009/06/10/zend-framework-navigation-and-breadcrumbs-with-an-xml-file-in-zf-18/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:06:39 +0000 Wenbert http://blog.ekini.net/2009/06/10/zend-framework-navigation-and-breadcrumbs-with-an-xml-file-in-zf-18/ This is related to the Making the Built-in Breadcrumb Helper Work I posted earlier. Thanks to Jonathan Lebensold’s screencast, I am able to create my navigation and breadcrumbs in a better way. Using an XML file makes more sense than using an array. It is easier to maintain and edit.

What the Navigation will look like:

//layout.phtml
echo $this->navigation()->menu();
  • Home
  • Query

    • My Drafts
    • My Orders
    • All Open Orders
  • Reports

    • Country
    • Country Revenue

And what the breadcrumbs will look like:

//layout.phtml
echo $this->navigation()->breadcrumbs()->setLinkLast(false)->setMinDepth(0)->render();
  • You are in: Home
  • Home > Query

    • You are in: Home > Query > My Drafts
    • You are in: Home > Query > My Orders
    • You are in: Home > Query > All Open Orders
  • You are in: Home > Reports

    • You are in: Home > Reports > Country
    • You are in: Home > Reports > Country Revenue

To do this, you first create an XML file. It makes more sense to create your XML file inside the configs directory. So create an XML file in:

application/configs/navigation.xml

The data in the XML file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configdata>
    <nav>
        <label>Home</label>
        <controller>dashboard</controller>
        <action>index</action>
        <pages>
            <query>
                <label>Query</label>
                <controller>query</controller>
                <action>index</action>
                <pages>
                    <mydrafts>
                        <label>My Drafts</label>
                        <controller>query</controller>
                        <action>index</action>
                        <params>
                            <queryname>mydrafts</queryname>
                        </params>
                    </mydrafts>
                    <myorders>
                        <label>My Orders</label>
                        <controller>query</controller>
                        <action>index</action>
                        <params>
                            <queryname>myorders</queryname>
                        </params>
                    </myorders>
                    <allopenorders>
                        <label>All Open Orders</label>
                        <controller>query</controller>
                        <action>index</action>
                        <params>
                            <queryname>allopenorders</queryname>
                        </params>
                    </allopenorders>
                </pages>
            </query>
            <reports>
                <label>Reports</label>
                <controller>report</controller>
                <action>index</action>
                <pages>
                    <country>
                        <label>Country</label>
                        <controller>report</controller>
                        <action>country</action>
                    </country>
                    <countryrevenue>
                        <label>Country Revenue</label>
                        <controller>report</controller>
                        <action>countryrevenue</action>
                    </countryrevenue>
                </pages>
            </reports>
        </pages>
    </nav>
</configdata>

The next part involves editing the Bootstrap.php file.

//add this in your bootstrap file
//application/Bootstrap.php
protected function _initNavigation()
{
    $this->bootstrap('layout');
    $layout = $this->getResource('layout');
    $view = $layout->getView();
    $config = new Zend_Config_Xml(APPLICATION_PATH.'/configs/navigation.xml');
 
    $navigation = new Zend_Navigation($config);
    $view->navigation($navigation);
}

What we are doing here is that we are simply loading the XML file (as an array) into the $view object. We are doing this so that we can access the Zend_Navigation object in our layout/views.

Final Steps
Lastly, you will need to open up your layout file and add these lines:

<html>
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="menu">
            <?php echo $this->navigation()->menu(); ?>
        </div>
        <div id="breadcrumbs">
            You are in: <?php echo $this->navigation()->breadcrumbs()->setLinkLast(false)->setMinDepth(0)->render(); ?>
        </div>
        <div id="content">
            Content of your page here.
        </div>
    </body>
<html>

More reading:
If you have time, check out Jonathan Lebensold’s screencast found in ZendCasts. It is an excellent tutorial and it goes all the way to beautifying your navigation using tabs and your breadcrumbs.

And lastly, the Zend_Navigation documentation can be found here.

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