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Menus - A TYPO3 Extension for creating fast menus - in a fast way

Introduction

TYPO3 CMS is known for handling large websites with lots of content. TYPO3 Core provides several ways to build navigation / menus in a very flexible way. However, generating menus has been a tedious issue in most of our large-scale projects. With TYPO3 v9, the performance of generating menus improved when it comes to URL generation, but a few conceptual issues within linking and menu generation still exist:

  1. All logic relies on HMENU

    Every menu is generated using HMENU, even the MenuDataProcessor for Fluid is using this. Yes, it's powerful, but also offers a lot of options we do not need in most circumstances.

  2. HMENU saves states for each page

    HMENU offers the possibility to define A LOT of states ("active", "current", "has children"). This information is different for each page - obviously - which is then cached in a separate cache entry in cache_hash - making the cache entries fairly large even though we do not use states.

    We use expAll (expand all subpages for all other pages as well) which makes the requests to the pages enormously large.

  3. HMENU has a cryptic syntax for "special" menus

    Nowadays, it is fairly common to build menus for footer navigation, mega-menus, sitemap-like menus for an additional sidebar. Using "special." for language menus, for "directories" or just a simple list of pages, seems rather complex.

This extension tries to overcome these pitfalls by

  • building menus once, then caches the results and afterwards applying active states (reduce amount of cached data). This is especially important for Tree-based menus,
  • introducing new cObjects and DataProcessors for the specific use cases making them more understandable for non-TYPO3-Gurus.

Installation & Requirements

Use composer req b13/menus or install it via TYPO3's Extension Manager from the TYPO3 Extension Repository using the extension key menus.

You need TYPO3 v9 with Site Handling for this extension to work. If your project supports mount points, this is not implemented. In addition, pages to access restricted pages (even though no access exists) are not yet considered.

Features

The extension ships TypoScript cObjects and TypoScript DataProcessors for Fluid-based page templates.

Common Options for all menus

  • excludePages - a list of page IDs (and their subpages if Tree Menu or Breadcrumbs is used) to exclude from the page
  • excludeDoktypes - a list of doktypes that are not rendered. BE_USER_SECTIONs are excluded by default. SYS_FOLDERs are queried (for subpages etc) but never rendered.
  • includeNotInMenu - include pages with nav_hide set to 1, instead of ignoring them

Common options for items

In TypoScript this is available as field:isSpacer, in Fluid, this is accessible in {page.isSpacer}

- {page.isCurrentPage} (bool)
- {page.isInRootLine} (bool)
- {page.isSpacer} (bool)
- {page.hasSubpages} (bool) - TreeMenu only
- {page.subpages} (array) - TreeMenu only

Tree Menu

Use this for mega menus, or separate menus for mobile devices, like sitemaps.

Pure TypoScript-based solution:

page.10 = TREEMENU
# a list of page IDs, rootpageID is used if none given
page.10.entryPoints = 23,13
# the number of levels to fetch from the database (1 if empty)
page.10.depth = 3
page.10.excludePages = 4,51
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
page.10.renderObj.level0 = TEXT
page.10.renderObj.level0.typolink.parameter.data = field:uid
page.10.renderObj.level0.typolink.ATagParams = class="active"
page.10.renderObj.level0.typolink.ATagParams.if.isTrue.field = isInRootLine
page.10.renderObj.level0.dataWrap = <li class="firstLevel">|<ul>{field:subpageContent}</ul></li>

Fluid-based solution:

page.10 = FLUIDTEMPLATE
page.10.dataProcessing.10 = B13\Menus\DataProcessing\TreeMenu
page.10.dataProcessing.10.entryPoints = 23,13
page.10.dataProcessing.10.depth = 3
page.10.dataProcessing.10.excludePages = 4,51
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.dataProcessing.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
page.10.dataProcessing.10.as = mobilemenu

Usage in Fluid:

<nav>
    <f:for each="{mobilemenu}" as="page">
        <f:link.page pageUid="{page.uid}">{page.nav_title}</f:link.page>
        <f:if condition="{page.hasSubpages} && {page.isInRootLine}">
            <ul>
                <f:for each="{page.subpages}" as="subpage">
                    <li><f:link.page pageUid="{subpage.uid}">{subpage.nav_title}</f:link.page>
                </f:for>
            </ul>
        </f:if>
    </f:for>
</nav>

Note: nav_title is title if Database-Record nav_title is empty.

Language Menu

Building a language switcher can be achieved by a few lines of code:

Pure TypoScript solution:

page.10 = LANGUAGEMENU
page.10.excludeLanguages = de,en
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
# add all siteLanguages to menu even if page is not available in language (default 0)
page.10.addAllSiteLanguages = 1
page.10.wrap = <ul> | </ul>
page.10.renderObj.typolink.parameter.data = field:uid
page.10.renderObj.typolink.additionalParams.data = field:language|languageId
page.10.renderObj.typolink.additionalParams.intval = 1
page.10.renderObj.typolink.additionalParams.wrap = &L=|
page.10.renderObj.data = field:language|title // field:language|twoLetterIsoCode
page.10.renderObj.wrap = <li class="language-item"> | </li>

The stdWrap data is the information of the current page plus the information merged from the selected SiteLanguage.

Fluid-based solution:

page.10 = FLUIDTEMPLATE
page.10.dataProcessing.10 = B13\Menus\DataProcessing\LanguageMenu
page.10.dataProcessing.10.excludeLanguages = de,en
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.dataProcessing.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
# add all siteLanguages to menu even if page is not available in language (default 0)
page.10.dataProcessing.10.addAllSiteLanguages = 1
page.10.dataProcessing.10.as = languageswitcher

Usage in Fluid:

<nav>
    <f:for each="{languageswitcher}" as="item">
        <f:link.page pageUid="{item.uid}" language="{item.language.languageId}">{item.language.title}</f:link.page>
    </f:for>
</nav>

Note: the languageMenu hold the siteLanguage on each item in the language property as an array

List Menu

If you just want a list of all items within a folder, or for a link list in the footer, use the List Menu.

Pure TypoScript-based solution:

page.10 = LISTMENU
# a page ID, rootpageID is used if none given, stdWrap possible
page.10.pages = 13,14,15
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
page.10.wrap = <ul> | </ul>
page.10.renderObj = TEXT
page.10.renderObj.typolink.parameter.data = field:uid
page.10.renderObj.wrap = <li> | </li>

Fluid-based solution:

page.10 = FLUIDTEMPLATE
page.10.dataProcessing.10 = B13\Menus\DataProcessing\ListMenu
page.10.dataProcessing.10.pages = 13,14,15
page.10.dataProcessing.10.as = footerlinks
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.dataProcessing.10.includeNotInMenu = 0

Usage in Fluid:

<nav>
    <f:for each="{footerlinks}" as="page">
        <f:link.page pageUid="{page.uid}">{page.nav_title}</f:link.page>
    </f:for>
</nav>

Breadcrumb Menu (a.k.a. Rootline Menu)

page.10 = BREADCRUMBS
page.10.excludePages = 4,51
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
page.10.wrap = <ul> | </ul>
page.10.renderObj = TEXT
page.10.renderObj.typolink.parameter.data = field:uid
page.10.renderObj.wrap = <li> | </li>

Fluid-based solution:

page.10 = FLUIDTEMPLATE
page.10.dataProcessing.10 = B13\Menus\DataProcessing\BreadcrumbsMenu
page.10.dataProcessing.10.excludePages = 4,51
# 0: default, 1 to include nav_hide = 1 pages
page.10.dataProcessing.10.includeNotInMenu = 0
page.10.dataProcessing.10.as = breadcrumbs

Usage in Fluid:

<nav>
    <f:for each="{breadcrumbs}" as="page">
        <f:link.page pageUid="{page.uid}">{page.nav_title}</f:link.page>
        <f:if condition="{page.isCurrentPage} == false"> &nbsp; </f:if>
    </f:for>
</nav>

Dynamic configuration values for the menu (stdWrap)

If you want to get a menu of the direct siblings of a page, no matter what page you have selected, you can use the stdWrap functions built into each property:

9999 = B13\Menus\DataProcessing\TreeMenu
9999 {
	entryPoints.data = page:pid
	as = listOfJobPages
}

By using the .data property of the entryPoints attribute we can access each property of the currently build page. And so we can render the siblings of the page.

Technical Details

Caching

Fetching the records is cached in a cache entry (with proper cache tags) within "cache_hash", and the rendering is also cached in a separated cache entry within "cache_pages" for each page (regular), where active state is applied.

FAQ

This extension refrains from handling options addQueryParams, or ADD_GET_PARAM, or the target property in order to deal with the pages as "native" as possible, like any other link.

License

The extension is licensed under GPL v2+, same as the TYPO3 Core. For details see the LICENSE file in this repository.

Open Issues

If you find an issue, feel free to create an issue on GitHub or a pull request.

ToDos

  • add includeSpacer option
  • extract stdWrap functionality out of caching parameters

Credits

This extension was created by Benni Mack in 2019 for b13 GmbH.

Find more TYPO3 extensions we have developed that help us deliver value in client projects. As part of the way we work, we focus on testing and best practices to ensure long-term performance, reliability, and results in all our code.