how to get an multidimensional menu out of my database? - php

Question

I want to need to make a menu where i don't know how deep the menu will be.
this is how my database table looks like:
table menu fields id, parent_id, name
i already tryed this to get a nice array back, but it dont work:
public function get()
{
$nodeList = array();
$tree = array();
$query = $this->db->get('menu');
$result = $query->result_array();
foreach ($result as $row) {
$nodeList[$row['id']] = array_merge($row, array('children' => array()));
}
foreach ($nodeList as $nodeId => &$node) {
if (!$node['parent'] || !array_key_exists($node['parent'], $nodeList)) {
$tree[] =& $node;
} else {
$nodeList[$node['parent']]['children'][] =& $node;
}
}
return $nodeList;
}
eventually I want to achieve this(a nice looking menu):
<ul>
<li><a href="">Apple<a/>
<ul>
<li>Iphone</li>
<ul>
<li>4S</li>
<li>5</li>
</ul>
<li>Ipad</li>
<ul>
<li>4</li>
<li>5</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="">Samsung<a/>
<ul>
<li>Galaxy</li>
<ul>
<li>S3</li>
<li>S4</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</li>
I hope you understand my question and can help me. i REALLYY!! need this.
thanks ;)

Answer 1

Your get() should probably return $tree, not $nodeList. Other than that, it seems perfectly fine.
Update. This example shows how to build HTML for nested menu:
function getUl($nodes)
{
$result = "<ul>\n";
foreach ($nodes as $n) {
$result .= '<li>...';
if (!empty($n['children'])) {
$result .= getUl($n['children']);
}
$result .= "</li>\n";
}
$result .= "\n</ul>";
return $result;
}