Zend Framework: Navigation XML and duplicate page elements - php

Question

In XML I'd normal expect the following to be perfectly valid and navigable in a meaningful way using something like PHP's DomDocument:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configdata>
<page>
<name>Home</name>
</page>
<page>
<name>Log in</name>
</page>
</configdata>
This is not the case when using Zend_Navigation. Each <page> element needs to have a unique name, so you would need to do:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configdata>
<page_home>
<name>Home</name>
</page_home>
<page_log_in>
<name>Log in</name>
</page_log_in>
</configdata>
This works, but is very annoying. I'd much rather have multiple page elements which can have the same name and can be easily copy and pasted when creating many pages for navigation.
Why does each one need a unique name?
Is there a way of not having to have a unique name?
#Charles
Yes, the following code is used to read in the navigaion XML
$config = new Zend_Config_Xml(APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/navigation.xml');
$container = new Zend_Navigation($config);
Zend_Registry::set("navigation", $container);
#Gordon
Good question...I used to use this method, but wanted another way that was easier to update and read. The array notation does solve the issue I have but it isn't an easy way of writing out the navigation for a site, especially when there are nested elements. XML is much easy to read and make sense of than PHP's arrays.
Granted this is my own opinion and it is a slower way of storing and parsing navigation data.

Answer 1

You can't use the first XML structure, because Zend_Navigation uses the Tag definition to create a part of the "Route". If you want use an another type of XML structure, you probably have to extend Zend_Navigation with your own parsing process.
$config = new Zend_Config_Xml(APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/navigation.xml');
$container new My_Navigation($config);
Another way would be to create a class to parse and modify the XML document before sending it to Zend_Navigation.
$config = new Zend_Config_Xml(APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/navigation.xml');
$navigationStructure = new My_Navigation_Parser($config);
$container new My_Navigation($navigationStructure);