Using Zend\\Navigation in your Album Module =========================================== In this tutorial we will use ``Zend\Navigation`` to add a navigation menu to the black bar at the top of the screen, and add breadcrumbs above the main site content. Preparation ----------- In a real world application, the album browser would be only a portion of a working website. Usually the user would land on a homepage first, and be able to view albums by using a standard navigation menu. So that we have a site that is more realistic than just the albums feature, lets make the standard skeleton welcome page our homepage, with the `/album` route still showing our album module. In order to make this change, we need to undo some work we did earlier. Currently, navigating to the root of your app (/) routes you to the ``AlbumController``'s default action. Let's undo this route change so we have two discrete entry points to the app, a home page, and an albums area. ``module/Application/config/module.config.php`` .. code-block:: php 'home' => array( 'type' => 'Zend\Mvc\Router\Http\Literal', 'options' => array( 'route' => '/', 'defaults' => array( 'controller' => 'Application\Controller\Album', // <-- change back here 'action' => 'index', ), ), ), This change means that if you go to the home page of your application (http://zf2-tutorial.localhost/), you see the default skeleton application introduction. Your list of albums is still available at the /album route. Setting Up Zend\\Navigation --------------- Firstly, we need to tell our application which ``NavigationFactory`` to use when using the bundled navigation view helpers. Thankfully, ZF2 comes with a default factory that will suit our needs just fine. To tell ZF2 to use this default factory, we simply add a ``navigation`` key to the service manager. Its best to do this in the ``Application`` module, because, like the translation data, this is specific to the entire application, and not just to our album pages: ``module/Application/config/module.config.php`` .. code-block:: php 'service_manager' => array( 'factories' => array( 'translator' => 'Zend\I18n\Translator\TranslatorServiceFactory', 'navigation' => 'Zend\Navigation\Service\DefaultNavigationFactory', \\ <-- add this ), ), Configuring our Site Map ------------------------ Next up, we need ``Zend\Navigation`` to understand the hierarchy of our site. Thankfully, if we add a ``navigation`` key to our merged config, the navigation factory will automagically create the container and pages needed to use the view helpers. Let's do this in the ``Application`` module: ``module/Application/config/module.config.php`` .. code-block:: php return array( ... 'navigation' => array( 'default' => array( array( 'label' => 'Home', 'route' => 'home', ), array( 'label' => 'Album', 'route' => 'album', 'pages' => array( array( 'label' => 'Add', 'route' => 'album', 'action' => 'add', ), array( 'label' => 'Edit', 'route' => 'album', 'action' => 'edit', ), array( 'label' => 'Delete', 'route' => 'album', 'action' => 'delete', ), ), ), ), ), ... ); This configuration maps out the pages we've defined in our controller, with labels linking to the given route names. You can define highly complex hierarchical sites here with pages and sub-pages linking to route names, controller/action pairs or external uris. For more information see the docs `here `__. Adding the Menu View Helper --------------------------- Now that we have the navigation helper configured by our service manager and merged config, we can easily add the menu to the title bar to our layout by using the ``menu`` view helper: ``module/Application/view/layout/layout.phtml`` .. code-block:: php ... translate('Skeleton Application') ?> navigation('navigation')->menu(); ?> ... The navigation helper is built in to Zend Framework 2, and uses the service manager configuration we've already defined to configure itself automatically. Refreshing your application you will see a working (but ugly) menu, with just a few tweaks however, we can make it look awesome: ``module/Application/view/layout/layout.phtml`` .. code-block:: php translate('Skeleton Application') ?> navigation('navigation') ->menu() ->setMinDepth(0) ->setMaxDepth(0) ->setUlClass('nav') ->render(); ?> Here we tell the renderer to give the root UL the class of 'nav' so that Twitter Bootstrap styles the menu correctly, and only render the first level of any given page. If you view your application in your browser, you will now see a nicely styled menu appear in the title bar. The great thing about ``Zend\Navigation`` is that it integrates with ZF2's route so can tell which page you are currently viewing. Because of this, it sets the active page to have a class of ``active`` in the menu. Twitter Bootstrap uses this to highlight your current page accordingly. Adding Breadcrumbs ------------------ Adding breadcrumbs is initially just as simple. In our ``layout.phtml`` we want to add breadcrumbs above the main content pane, so our foolish user knows exactly where they are in our complex website. Inside the container div, before we output the content from the view, let's add a simple breadcrumb: ``module/Application/view/layout/layout.phtml`` .. code-block:: php ...
navigation('navigation')->breadcrumbs()->setMinDepth(0); // <-- Add this!! ?> content; ?>
... This adds a simple but functional breadcrumb to every page (we simply tell it to render from a depth of 0 so we see all level of pages) but we can do better than that! Because Bootstrap has a styled breadcrumb as part of it's base CSS, so let's add a partial that outputs the UL in bootstrap happy CSS. We'll create it in the ``view`` directory of the ``Application`` module (this partial is application wide, rather than album specific): ``module/Application/view/partial/breadcrumb.phtml`` .. code-block:: php Notice how the partial is passed a ``Zend\View\Model\ViewModel`` instance with the ``pages`` property set to an array of pages to render. Now all we have to do is tell the breadcrumb helper to use the partial we have just written: ``module/Application/view/layout/layout.phtml`` .. code-block:: php ...
navigation('navigation') // <-- Update this!! ->breadcrumbs() ->setMinDepth(0) ->setPartial(array('partial/breadcrumb.phtml', 'Album')); ?> content; ?>
... Refreshing the page now gives us a lovely styled set of breadcrumbs on each page.