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POCreating admin menu items dynamically in joomla
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copied!<p>Another day playing around with joomla, and another shortcoming to fix :)</p> <p>This time it comes in the form of the administration(backend) menu. To add items/subitems to this menu, people have to write the menu items in an xml file accompanying their components/extension/plugin/whatever. When the extension is installed, joomla "generates" the menu items and "stores" them in the DB. Effectively, the real/tangible menu is rendered by reading the DB.</p> <p>This has several implications:</p> <ul> <li>The menu is not scriptable</li> <li>The menu is not dynamic; changing the XML file <em>after</em> installation, won't update the menu</li> <li>Removal of items is not scriptable; joomla takes care of removing any items when you uninstall the extension.</li> </ul> <p>I've got this system which relies on the ability to modify menu items on the fly, but through code. Simply put, I need to have functionality where I can create a volatile menu item (ie, it gets removed at the end of session).</p> <p>To do so, I've got a couple of prospective hacks:</p> <ol> <li>Override the joomla global database instance so that I can make it return fake menu items. This is possible since the database object is stored in a public property of JFactory class: <code>JFactory::$database=new MyFakeJDatabase(JFactory::$database);</code></li> <li>Intercept the menu code (html) before being output and mess it up according to my needs. This is not template-friendly in that the end result would be injecting html, which might not be what the template was designed for.</li> <li>Create menu items through javascript. This suffers issues with the template AND the javascript that toggles submenus.</li> <li>Create menu items in the DB whenever I need them and somehow "tag" my items so that I remove them the next time (or end of session). This sounds like it would work like a charm. Since I can buffer menu items, I could possibly create my menu items in one whole SQL statement. Than I could use another SQL to remove the tagged menu items. 2 SQL statements might not be much of a load on the server.</li> </ol> <p>What do you think?</p> <p><strong>Edit:</strong> I've checked <code>joomla/administrator/modules/mod_menu/helper.php</code> to see if I could find a way to inject my stuff, wishing that maybe joomla used a global variable or something, but to no use - the menu items are creating directly by reading the db and rendering as well. FYI I've searched a while on Google, to no use.</p>

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