thank you for the code villas, will have a play. i didn't think my attempt was for anything complicated personally, i just wanted to output an array in the same syntax as response.menu but with all results coming from a single 'page' table in a database. I was trying to think of the best way round multiple database lookups for child elements and hitting any snags with menu levels, which led me to the link in my first post.
i wanted to really make something unique from any plugins that can just use the in-built MENU(), so that it is a small app with few dependencies. i also had an issue referencing part of the markmin stuff inside the plugin (can't remember what now) which is what led me down the diy route. also had delusions of grandeur on making this a simple (to end user anyway) cms app that uses as much of the core as possible.
