The Web server I've got Drupal running on also supports Java Server Pages - I'm running Apache Httpd which can JKmount webapps running on Tomcat. So if you go to http://www.example.com you're served page from Drupal, but if you go to http://www.example.com/foo/ you're into the foo webapp controlled by Java, Drupal never sees it.
What I'd like to do is to add a primary link from the Drupal main page to the Java webapp, but when I tried to add it Drupal said it was an invalid path - to Drupal it certainly is. Is there a way to add such a link so that Drupal won't try to pre-validate it or worse start to intercept that new path so my webapp doesn't get seen?
The next trick on top of that is that I'd like to show that link only to certain Drupal roles (don't worry, I'm not depending on security by obscurity, just not showing a user a link they're not going to get very far with).
Any ideas?
Comments
The menu_link_save function
The menu_link_save function puts links into the menu_links table - you could try just inserting a row into that which would be crude but would probably work. You could do it more elegantly by writing a module but I suspect menu_link_save will reject your link because the Drupal path doesn't exist. Having said that, there may be a module which does this already - I don't know one but it sounds like the sort of thing that would exist so I'd take a look there first.
You'll also need to do a Google search to figure out how to stop Drupal taking over your custom path since that file won't exist - you may just be able to do this by changing some ReWrite rules in your Apache configuration or .htaccess file.