CodeIgniter menu with subitems from a single DB table - php

Question

Just getting into the whole MVC developing style.
Using CI I think I got the initial hang on the controllers, models and views. But, I run into a problem which was an easy-peasy for me in "my own" way of coding.
I have a single DB table to drive dynamic menu. The design is:
With sample data being:
The logic, in my head anyway, would be:
select * where active=1, then
if row's parent_id==0 check the retrieved data-set for rows where
parent_id==id of the current row
if not found, generate <li class="no_subs"></li> element
if found, generate <li class="subs"> element, open new <ul>
generate <li></li> for all items that matched, close <ul>, close
"subs" <li>
So, based on the above sample data the resulting html would be:
<li class="no_subs">Home</li>
<li class="no_subs">News</li>
<li class="subs">Training
<ul>
<li>Materials</li>
<li>Tests</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="subs">Other
<ul>
<li>Usefull links</li>
</ul>
</li>
So far all I can do is generate the top level menu.
Any ideas how to tackle this?
Thanks,

Answer 1

You can join the same table twice to achieve your goal
grub the data where parent_id == 0 and active == 1, so you will get the only menu titles.
join the data with the same table where id == parent_id. so you will get the this table.
id | name | parent_id | active | link | as_id | as_name | as_parent_id | as_active | as_link
**this 2 steps can be done in single sql query.
then i think this code will help you...
$sub_menu_started = false;
for ($i=0; $i < count($result); $i++) {
if (empty($result[$i]['as_name'])) {
echo '<li class="no_subs">'.$result[$i]['name'].'</li>';
}
else {
if(!$sub_menu_started) {
echo '<li class="subs">'.$result[$i]['name'];
echo '<ul><li>'.$result[$i]['as_name'].'</li>';
$sub_menu_started = true;
}
else {
if ($result[$i]['id'] == $result[$i-1]['id']) {
echo '<li>'.$result[$i]['as_name'].'</li>';
if($result[$i]['id'] != $result[$i+1]['id']) {
echo '</ul></li>';
$sub_menu_started = false;
}
}
}
}
}
if ($sub_menu_started) {
echo '</ul></li>';
}