Menu management for Laravel applications

Menu management in Laravel made simple and painless. This package does not provide any UI, focusing only on functionality to store and display the menu.

Items can be displayed in different languages thanks to the spatie/laravel-translatable package.

Requirements

This package requires Laravel 8 or higher, PHP 8 or higher, and a database that supports json fields and MySQL compatible functions.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require blimundo/laravel-menu

The package will automatically register itself.

After install you can create the menus table by running the migrations:

php artisan migrate

A MenuGenerator alias will be available to application.

Example

use Blimundo\Menu\Builder;

Builder::add('Home')->order(1)->icon('mdi mdi-home')->url('HomeController@show')->create();

Builder::add(['en'  =>  'Settings',  'pt'  =>  'Configurações'])
	->order(9)
	->icon('mdi mdi-cog')
	->items(function  ()  {
		Builder::add(['en'  =>  'Roles',  'pt'  =>  'Funções'])
		->order(1)
		->icon('mdi mdi-account-group')
		->url('role.index')
		->gates('can_view_roles')
		->create();

		Builder::add(['en'  =>  'Users',  'pt'  =>  'Utilizadores'])
		->order(2)
		->icon('mdi mdi-account')
		->url('user.index')
		->gates('can_view_users')
		->create();
	});

dd(MenuGenerator::generate());

/* Result:

array:2 [
  "Home" => array:5 [
    "icon" => "mdi mdi-home"
    "label" => "Home"
    "link" => "localhost:8000/home"
    "level" => 1
    "has_items" => false
  ]
  "Settings" => array:6 [
    "icon" => "mdi mdi-cog"
    "label" => "Settings"
    "link" => "#"
    "level" => 1
    "has_items" => true
    "items" => array:2 [
      "Roles" => array:5 [
        "icon" => "mdi mdi-account-group"
        "label" => "Roles"
        "link" => "localhost:8000/role"
        "level" => 2
        "has_items" => false
      ]
      "Users" => array:5 [
        "icon" => "mdi mdi-account"
        "label" => "Users"
        "link" => "localhost:8000/user"
        "level" => 2
        "has_items" => false
      ]
    ]
  ]
*/

Persisting the menu in the database

To create and persist the menu in the database, you can use the Builder class. In the example below, two menu entries are created:

use Blimundo\Menu\Builder;

Builder::add('Home')->create();
Builder::add('Help')->create();

Translations

To define multiple languages, just pass an array to the add() method, where the key is the language code. Internally the package uses spatie/laravel-translatable to manage translations.

Builder::add(['en' => 'Help', 'pt' => 'Ajuda'])->create();

Url

You have 3 options to generate urls:

• route url (call Laravel route() helper - will rise exception in runtime if route doesn't exist)
• action url (call Laravel action() helper - will rise exeption in runtime if controller or method doesn't exist)
• static url

Builder::add('Google')->url('https://google.com')->create();
Builder::add('Add User')->route('users.create')->create();
Builder::add('Import User')->action('\App\Http\Controllers\UserController@import')->create();

Icon

To associate an icon to the menu just call the icon() function

Builder::add('Help')->icon('mdi mdi-help')->create();

Order

To set the item order just call the order() function.

Builder::add('Help')->order(2)->create();

Items with the same order (or that have no defined order) are sorted alphabetically according to the current language.

Gates

Sometimes we want the menu to appear only if the user has certain permissions. This package makes this a breeze. Just call the gates() function with the name of the gate. When generating the menu, the package tests the gate and if it passes the menu is included.

Builder::add('Add User')->gates('can_add_user')->create();

If you need to test more than one gate, just pass a list. The menu is only displayed if all gates return true.

Builder::add('Add User')->gates('can_add_user', 'can_import_user')->create();

Submenu

To create a submenu call the items() function, passing a callback. All menus created within the callback will be associated with the menu.

Builder::add('Settings')->items(function  ()  {
	Builder::add('Roles')->create();
	Builder::add('Users')->create();
});

License

The Laravel Menu is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.