I wanted to write a primer that others could use to get started with Zend_Navigation. This is a short guide to how Zend_Navigation works, and how you can use it to improve your application.

His primer starts with a bit of vocabulary you'll need to know before you get started - things like MVC pages, URI pages and containers. He helps you create Zend_Navigation-enabled pages, both a simple one that just makes an object and a more complex one that uses a tree structure (as defined in an array) to help build the navigation element.

Specifically, I will describe how I boot my PHP scripts and why I boot them the way I do. Part 1 shows how my requirements for code portability and maintainability influence the boot process. Part 2 will go into more detail about the specific steps executed by the boot code.

His basic task for the first example is to make a templating sort of system, calling a Navigation class to output links in list items. He outlines the goals of the project, what he's found for his current solution and some alternatives he's discovered along the way.

I developed this PHP function for a project I'm working on. I'm posting it here in case I need it again, or in case you find it handy.

The function turns each line into an option tag making defining custom menus based on the contents of dynamically-given text files easy.

This could also be easily adapted to create navigations menus at the top of your pages with a few modifications to the HTML tags being used and some CSS to change the look of the list.

• CSV Helper - I was recently outputting some comma-delimited data and thought I would benefit from a simple csv helper
• p28n, the top to bottom persistent internationalization tutorial - For some developers, allowing a website to support multiple languages is essential. Luckily cakePHP 1.2 has the foundations available to make this possible.
• Tracking navigation history of a user - Many times it can be very useful to track the navigation history of a user. [...] With this HistoryComponent, it's extremely easy to handle such actions.
• Habtm hacks to menage columns in both models - I had a habtm relationship between two models and when i did a "findall" in a model i couldn't filter the rows with a clause from the the other model.
• SecureGet Component - I am not pretending this can replace ACL or more complex implementation, it's just a small component, inspired a bit from the Security component.

If you're a CakePHP developer, you'd do well to check out The Bakery for these and more great Cake-related articles, tutorials and information.

One of the challenges many of us have faced before and will face in future is building a menu. Now this of course is very simple assuming that we're just shooting for a static <ul> with some <li>'s containing the links. However the tricky part is to figure out what is the active menu item. I had some code doing this in the past but tried out a new flavor of it today which I call the MacGyver menu for CakePHP as it's a little dirty yet powerful and easy to maintain.

In his included code, he creates a simple navigation from an array of titles/links and, with some sorting, a regular expression and a CSS class, the selected item can be highlighted simply.

Although a site may not always warrant a full multilayer navigation menu, most websites usually have at least a few different sections. Often many pages have links back to the top pages of each section, and therefore it is useful to highlight which section the user is currently in. Listing 9.2.1 looks at the URL of the current web page and, based on that, determines what section of the website it is in and changes the section menu.

They provide the script and a brief explaination, but not much else. Seems like the snippet might make more sense with a little more context, but it's still useful.

He quotes from the oscommerce.com site about what their goal for the software is and the methods they're working at to achieve those goals. Then comes his reasons for not wanting to use their software - five of them on differing subjects:

• no separation of logic and presentation
• difficult to integrate into an existing design
• security
• cannot have multiple sizes of image previews
• admin navigation issues

His list includes:

• Choose the right language
• Frequency sorting
• Avoid Random Mappings
• Try Different Maps

Each item has a brief explaination of what its about, and some include examples of what to do/what not to do.

He tells it more from an "outsider's perspective", for someone not really familiar with PHP. There's a lot of introductory explaination and installation instructions on getting PHP working, but he does eventually get to the (very) simple templating example.

In the navigation tutorial, they show you a simpel way to use the switch() control to display different content based on a variable set in the $_GET array (URL string).

The second tutorial, Single-Page Password Protection, shows you quickly how to create a form that takes in a password and checks it against one hard-coded into the PHP script. If it validates, the "secret content" is shown.

Both of these tutorials are very simple, and, if you're not careful with them, could cause some security issues with your scripts. All in all, though, they're a good starting place...]]> Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:30:58 -0600