This sounds pretty cool Steve. Doing the menu-selection on the server
side is definitely better than client side. I've done something
similar with SiteMesh. It'd be nice to write-up some howtos as part
of the Struts Menu documentation. I've cc'd the Struts Menu user list
so they can see your solution.
Matt
On 1/11/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Matt.
>
> I've done some recent work using Struts Menu - very useful, thanks.
>
> However, my project required dynamic menus without any client-side
> JavaScript for showing or selecting menu state.
>
> Since Struts Menu obviously needs to know which menu item has been
> selected, and then builds the menu on-the-fly, I thought it would be fairly
> simple to move the JavaScript logic back into the web application, and do
> it that way.
>
> I was expecting to have to extend some of the Struts Menu Java code, but it
> turned out to be a lot easier than that.
>
> The trick is to keep track of the menu state by assigning hooks to the
> selected menu items inside your Tiles definitions, loading them into the
> request inside the main Tiles layout, then pulling them back into Velocity
> to work out where you are in the menu and generate the appropriate HTML and
> CSS markup for the menu.
>
> For example, for a 3 level menu (1 set of horizontal top buttons + 2
> further levels of nesting on a vertical side menu), you need to do
> something like:
>
> In Tiles definitions:
>
> <put name="topMenuSelected" value="topMenu_1" />
> <put name="subMenu" value="subMenu1" />
> <put name="menuSelected" value="subMenu_1_1" />
>
> In the tiles layout:
>
> <tiles:useAttribute id="topMenuSelected" name="topMenuSelected" scope=
> "request" />
> <tiles:useAttribute id="subMenu" name="subMenu" scope="request" />
> <tiles:useAttribute id="menuSelected" name="menuSelected" scope="request"
> />
>
> In the menu-config.xml:
>
> <Menu name="topMenu">
> <Item name="topMenu_1" title="Section 1" action="/Section_1.do" />
> <Item name="topMenu_2" title="Section 2" action="/Section_2.do" />
>
> </Menu>
>
> <Menu name="subMenu1">
> <Item name="subMenu_1" title="S1-P1" action="/s1_page_1.do" >
> <Item name="subMenu_1_1" title="S1-P1_1" action="/s1_page_1_1.do" />
> <Item name="subMenu_1_2" title="S1-P1_2" action="/s1_page_1_2.do" />
> <Item name="subMenu_1_3" title="S1-P1_3" action="/s1_page_1_3.do" />
> </Item>
> ...
>
> Then in the Velocity, you can do:
>
> #set ($menuSelected = $request.menuSelected)
> #set ($topMenuSelected = $request.topMenuSelected)
> #set ($subMenu = $request.subMenu)
>
> ...
>
> #if($menu.name == $menuSelected)
> #set($styleClass="selected")
> <li class="$styleClass">$title</li>
> #else
> #set($styleClass="unselected")
> <li class="$styleClass"><a class="main" href="$menu.url" title="$title">
> ${title}</a></li>
> #end
>
> ...
>
> to work out where in the menu hierarchy the page that you are rendering
> should be. It's then just a matter of writing Velocity code to generate
> your links using CSS to decorate them.
>
> You can also use exactly the same variables to build a breadcrumbs trail
> (not the click-trail type, but the "where am I in the site" type) - very
> useful.
>
> I've got a very simple working sample I can send you as a WAR file. It's
> not huge, but I didn't want to send an email attachment without your
> agreement. I should also have a working sample on the web very soon.
>
> Note - I decided to split the 3 tier menu into 2 separate menu chunks
> rather than deal with a single 3 level menu. Very easy to extend to 4
> levels (2 top - 2 side). No doubt this can be done more elegantly with
> recursion, but my time was limited and I had to bash something out very
> quickly.
>
> Finding and adapting Struts Menu without writing any new JavaCode has made
> my life much easier.
>
> If you find this idea useful, please feel free to do whatever you want with
> it. It would be good to see it improved and incorporated into the main
> project.
>
> Anyway, thanks again for the original Struts Menu, Appfuse, and all the
> other good stuff.
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
>
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