Layered navigation system php

Question

I'm stuck trying to create a basic navigation system for a site.

I've got a .txt file that I'm trying to put the whole site nav into then I'm looping through line by line and creating nested s. This works fine, but I have two problems:

1-I have a separate navigation in a different div so it's not nested and I don't know how to populate that since it doesn't happen in the first loop.

2-I don't know how to change the class of the parent nav link without using JQuery or manually adding a $parent variable to each page.

Here is my code:

nav.txt

index.php:Home
products.php:Products:2
    ace.php:Ace Blade
    electrodes.php:Electrodes
    megasoft.php:Mega Soft
    lletz.php:Lletz Loops
    megapower.php:Mega Power:-2
samples.php:Samples
gogreen.php:Go Green:2
    wastecalculator.php:Waste Calculator
    environmental.php:Environmental Considerations:-2
about.php:About Us

MY NAV FUNCTION:

<?php 

function  main_navigation()
{    

$active_page = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

?>

<div class="main_nav">
    <ul>

        <?php
            $nav = fopen("template/nav.txt", "r") or exit("Unable to open file!");
            //Output a line of the file until the end is reached        
            while(!feof($nav)){ 
                $line = fgets($nav);
                list($url, $name, $layer) = explode(":", $line);

                echo "<li>";
                if ($active_page == $url) {
                        echo "<div class='active'>".$name."</div>";
                    }else{
                        echo "<a href='".$url."'>".$name."</a>";
                    };
                if ($layer == 2){
                    echo "<ul>";
                }elseif($layer == -2){
                    echo "</ul>";
                }else{
                    echo "</li>";
                };

            };
            fclose($nav);
        ?>
    </ul>
</div>
<?
};

?>

So, again it's not shown here, but I'm trying to add a third "layer" but it isn't nested within this .

Why this way? If you are using a text file I guess its not realy dynamic and then its better to just write the HTML code and put that in an include file. That is faster and easier to debug. If its only for the $active_page part then there are better ways than this. — Hugo Delsing, Mar 05 '13 at 18:05
Reason for the .txt file was just to make maintenance easier and have the navigation accessible outside of a mess of code. — Brian Barrus, Mar 05 '13 at 18:09

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '13 at 19:02

If you want the navigation outside a mess of code you could use something like the following. This would allow for layering but still simple codeing. And I think a lot easier to understand when you check this code back in a year or so then using -2 and 2

menu.php

<?php
function AddMenuItem($url, $name)
{
  $active_page = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

  if ($active_page == $url)
    echo "<div class='active'>".$name."</div>";
  else
    echo "<a href='".$url."'>".$name."</a>";
}
?>

<ul>
  <li>
    <?php echo AddMenuItem("index.php", "Home"); ?>
  </li>
  <li>
    <?php echo AddMenuItem("products.php", "Products"); ?>
    <ul>
      <li>
        <?php echo AddMenuItem("ace.php", "Ace Blade"); ?>
      </li>
      <li>
        <?php echo AddMenuItem("electrodes.php", "Electrodes"); ?>
      </li>
      <li>
        <?php echo AddMenuItem("megasoft.php", "Mega Soft"); ?>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
    <?php echo AddMenuItem("samples.php", "Samples"); ?>
  </li>
</ul>



index.php, products.php, ace.php, etc.

<?php require_once("menu.php"); ?>

Thanks. Guess I was over thinking it. – Brian Barrus Mar 05 '13 at 20:45 — Brian Barrus, Mar 05 '13 at 20:45

Layered navigation system php

1 Answers1