Php menu parent id

3 Steps Simple Dynamic Menu With PHP MYSQL

Welcome to a quick tutorial on how to create a dynamic navigation menu with PHP and MySQL. So you are looking for ways to dynamically generate a menu, and not have to update the HTML every time?

We can create a simple dynamic navigation menu with PHP MySQL in just a few steps:

1. Create a database table to store the menu items.
2. Create a PHP script to fetch the menu items from the database.
3. Finally, draw the menu in HTML.

But just how is this done? Let us walk through an example in this guide – Read on!

TLDR – QUICK SLIDES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DYNAMIC MENU IN PHP MYSQL

All right, let us now get into the example of creating a dynamic menu with PHP and MYSQL.

STEP 1) MENU DATABASE TABLE

1A) MENU ITEMS TABLE

CREATE TABLE `menu_items` ( `item_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL, `parent_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, `item_text` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `item_link` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `item_target` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4; ALTER TABLE `menu_items` ADD PRIMARY KEY (`item_id`), ADD KEY (`parent_id`); ALTER TABLE `menu_items` MODIFY `item_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT; 

1B) DUMMY MENU ITEMS

INSERT INTO `menu_items` (`item_id`, `parent_id`, `item_text`, `item_link`, `item_target`) VALUES (1, 0, 'Home', '/', NULL), (2, 0, 'Blog', 'blog/', NULL), (3, 0, 'Reviews', 'reviews/', NULL), (4, 0, 'Shop', 'shop/', '_BLANK'), (5, 2, 'How To', 'blog/how/', NULL), (6, 2, 'Technology', 'blog/tech/', NULL), (7, 2, 'Hacks', 'blog/hacks/', NULL);

These should be pretty self-explanatory. The first level items are home, blog, reviews, and shop. Only “blog” has second-level items – How to, technology, and hacks. Of course, feel free to nest deeper, for example, (8, 7, ‘Windows Hacks’, ‘blog/hacks/windows/’, NULL) . But I will advise against that – The design and HTML become very difficult with deeply nested items.

STEP 2) GET MENU ITEMS FROM DATABASE

 PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION, PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FETCH_MODE => PDO::FETCH_ASSOC ]); // (B) DRILL DOWN GET MENU ITEMS // ARRANGE BY [PARENT ID] => [MENU ITEMS] $menu = []; $next = [0]; while (true) < $stmt = $pdo->prepare(sprintf( "SELECT * FROM `menu_items` WHERE `parent_id` IN (%s)", implode(",", $next) )); $stmt->execute(); $next = []; while ($r = $stmt->fetch()) < if (!isset($menu[$r["parent_id"]])) < $menu[$r["parent_id"]] = []; >$menu[$r["parent_id"]][$r["item_id"]] = $r; $next[] = $r["item_id"]; > if (count($next) == 0) < break; >> // (C) CLOSE DATABASE CONNECTION $stmt = null; $pdo = null;

1. Connect to the database. Remember to change the settings to your own.
2. Use a while loop to automatically drill down to get the menu items. The menu items are in the arrangement of $menu[PARENT ID][ITEM ID] = MENU ITEM .
3. Close the database connection.

I can hear angry trolls screaming “so stupid and dangerous to use an infinite while loop”. I agree, the more deeply nested the menu is, the slower and more complex this becomes. There is also a risk of getting into an infinite loop.

But this is also one of the better ways to satisfy everyone who wants to do deeply nested menus. There is no perfect system, I cannot please everyone – So feel free to change this part to a recursive function if you are not happy with it.

STEP 3) DRAW HTML MENU

 %s", $i["item_target"]!="" ? "target='". $i["item_target"] ."' " : "" , $i["item_link"], $i["item_text"] ); > // (C) WRITE HTML MENU TO FILE ob_start(); foreach ($menu[0] as $id=>$i) < // (C1) WITH SUB-ITEMS if (isset($menu[$id])) < ?>
$c) < draw($c); >?>