How to create a Menu item which is just a placeholder?

Um, yes.
That amendment does do exactly what you say.
But the point here is that we deliberately don't want these spacer entries (subtitles) or spacers to appear as links, or be clickable. :)

I think to get styling tweaks, you'd be better to give it a non-href class and style that.

.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/

This is great. Thanks for the code. It worked for me.
Now i am wondering how i can show the #linked menu item without the underline.
( I am using horizontal nice menus)

Marc:

Thanks for the brief code, I can't seem to get this code working (I even tried messing around a little), but maybe I'm using it wrong. I'm using the theme Garland, and what I'm after is placeholder top level primary links that expand to the second layer of the hierarchy if clicked:

Primary menu item A - Real path (i.e., goes to a node)
Submenu item 1
Submenu item 2
Primary menu item B - Placeholder (goes nowhere, except expands the subitems below)
Submenu item 3
Submenu item 4

I'm not a code expert, so any help to make this happen. Right now if I put the code above into the Garland theme (garland_theme_links) it just grays out the item and makes it unclickable (and kills the "triangle" for Garland above that menu item). Ideally, it would just open up the subitems as I describe above, and go nowhere else. I've seen numerous posts about NON-Primary menus, yours seems to be the only one that covers primary menus.

Thanks,
Dave

Hi Marc,
I know this was a while ago, but I just tried to do this in Drupal 6, but am not quite getting it. Here's what I tried to do...

Changed the code from this:

function theme_links($links, $attributes = array('class' => 'links')) {
  $output = '';

  if (count($links) > 0) {
    $output = '<ul'. drupal_attributes($attributes) .'>';

    $num_links = count($links);
    $i = 1;

    foreach ($links as $key => $link) {
      $class = $key;

      // Add first, last and active classes to the list of links to help out themers.
      if ($i == 1) {
        $class .= ' first';
      }
      if ($i == $num_links) {
        $class .= ' last';
      }
      if (isset($link['href']) && ($link['href'] == $_GET['q'] || ($link['href'] == '<front>' && drupal_is_front_page()))) {
        $class .= ' active';
      }
      $output .= '<li'. drupal_attributes(array('class' => $class)) .'>';

      if (isset($link['href'])) {
        // Pass in $link as $options, they share the same keys.
        $output .= l($link['title'], $link['href'], $link);
      }
      else if (!empty($link['title'])) {
        // Some links are actually not links, but we wrap these in <span> for adding title and class attributes
        if (empty($link['html'])) {
          $link['title'] = check_plain($link['title']);
        }
        $span_attributes = '';
        if (isset($link['attributes'])) {
          $span_attributes = drupal_attributes($link['attributes']);
        }
        $output .= '<span'. $span_attributes .'>'. $link['title'] .'</span>';
      }

      $i++;
      $output .= "</li>\n";
    }

    $output .= '</ul>';
  }

  return $output;
}

To this:

function phptemplate_theme_links($links, $attributes = array('class' => 'links')) {
  $output = '';

  if (count($links) > 0) {
    $output = '<ul'. drupal_attributes($attributes) .'>';

    $num_links = count($links);
    $i = 1;

    foreach ($links as $key => $link) {
      $class = $key;

      // Add first, last and active classes to the list of links to help out themers.
      if ($i == 1) {
        $class .= ' first';
      }
      if ($i == $num_links) {
        $class .= ' last';
      }
      if (isset($link['href']) && ($link['href'] == $_GET['q'] || ($link['href'] == '<front>' && drupal_is_front_page()))) {
        $class .= ' active';
      }
      $output .= '<li'. drupal_attributes(array('class' => $class)) .'>';

      if (isset($link['href'])) {
        // Pass in $link as $options, they share the same keys.
        $output .= l($link['title'], $link['href'], $link);
      }
	  // Try to add marcvangend's solution from: http://drupal.org/node/128618#comment-726186
      else if ($link['href'] == '#') {
        if (!$html) {
          $link['title'] = check_plain($link['title']);
        }
        $link['attributes']['class'] .= ' menu-sub-header';
        $output .= '<span'. drupal_attributes($link['attributes']) .'>'. $link['title'] .'</span>';
      }
      else if (!empty($link['title'])) {
        // Some links are actually not links, but we wrap these in <span> for adding title and class attributes
        if (empty($link['html'])) {
          $link['title'] = check_plain($link['title']);
        }
        $span_attributes = '';
        if (isset($link['attributes'])) {
          $span_attributes = drupal_attributes($link['attributes']);
        }
        $output .= '<span'. $span_attributes .'>'. $link['title'] .'</span>';
      }

      $i++;
      $output .= "</li>\n";
    }

    $output .= '</ul>';
  }

  return $output;
}

I still get the error message in Drupal 6

The path '' is either invalid or you do not have access to it.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Scott Rigby
http://basekamp.com
http://PlausibleArtworlds.org

I'm using Zen theme and have a sub-theme.

In my template file (in the sub-theme directory) I have added a slightly re-coded version of the function:

function zen_menu_item_link($item, $link_item) {	
	if ($link_item['path'] == "<none>") {
		return  '<span class="menu_placeholder">'.$item['title'].'</span>';
	} 
	else {
		$tab = ($item['type'] & MENU_IS_LOCAL_TASK) ? TRUE : FALSE;
		return l(
			$tab ? '<span class="tab">'. check_plain($item['title']) .'</span>' : $item['title'],
			$link_item['path'],
			!empty($item['description']) ? array('title' => $item['description']) : array(),
			!empty($item['query']) ? $item['query'] : NULL,
			!empty($link_item['fragment']) ? $link_item['fragment'] : NULL,
			FALSE,
			$tab
		);
	}	
}

I put it in my sub-theme directory and call it zen_menu_item_link rather than phptemplate_menu_item_link so that it over-rides the phptemplate_menu_item_link in the root of the zen theme.

Then I use <none> as the URL for menu items that I want to appear as text rather than a link.

Then I theme class menu_placeholder appropriately.

It works perfectly. I do find I need to clear the menu cache sometimes to see the changes as I code.

Have you disabled/uninstalled Special Menu Items?