Show items on same level if active menu level doesn't have children

Did this get disabled in 6.x-2.3? We upgraded due to teh XSS issue, and all of a sudden our sidebar menus all vanished beyond the first level. We used to be able to see same-level items on pages with no children. For now, we're going to have to go back to an earlier version-- I can't go through and rebuild all our menus!

It sounds like you were wanting the behaviour that others thought was a bug. Is that correct? #345552: Inconsistent display of starting level set to children of active item

I double that!

Yes, exactly.

Here's the solution for this problem that works for me -- I found the difference in the file menu_block.follow.inc between ver 6.2.2 and 6.2.3

Just remove these lines 53 - 55 from the file menu_block.follow.inc:

if ($level == 'child') {
  $tree = array();
}

I can't remember how to write a patch file otherwise I would. Anyway, here's how I got this to work for my site.

I second the optional switch, as it creates more consistency and thus improves user experience.

I doubt this is the same issue, but I figured I'd share my idea with others that might encounter my issue. For me, if a top level menu item doesn't have any children the entire block doesn't show. Blocks need content, this is just how they work.

My menu block titles are all linked and I still need the block to show so you can click on the title regardless if you have no children. I use fgMenus on my site (http://www.juneauschools.org) to dynamically generate menus based on what clocks blocks are present in my menu region.

So I decided to modify menu_block a little to check and see if the content (menu) is empty and replace it with a UL tag with a class of "nomenu". I've also included my little recursive jQuery script that dynamically goes through each menu block and skips the "ul.nomenu" ones. Enjoy!

It would be nice if the title could always be shown or at least give the option, like they've said above.

/****************** menu_block.module (2010-05-18 Changes)
Line 322:
        Commented out:
          $data['content'] = menu_block_tree_output($tree, $config);
          
        Replaced with:
          $content = menu_block_tree_output($tree, $config);
          $data['content'] = empty($content) ? '<ul class="nomenu"></ul>' : $content;
          
        Reason:
          Need to still show menu links even if no children. <nomenu> for fgMenus
******************/

and jQuery:

	// Create fgMenus
	var themeArray    = new Array('blue','purple','orange','green','red');
	var themeLimit    = themeArray.length;
	var themeCurrent  = 0;
	$('.block-menu_block').each(function(i){
	  var content = $(this).find('div.content');
	  if (content.length != 0) {
	    if($(content).find('ul.nomenu').length == 0) {
  	    if (themeCurrent >= themeLimit) {
  	      themeCurrent = 0;
  	    }
  	    var menuLink = $(this).find('h2').find('a');
  	    var menuContent = $(this).find('div.content').find('div').html();
  	    var menuTitle = $(menuLink).text();
  	    menuLink.menu({
    			theme: themeArray[themeCurrent],
    			content: menuContent,
    			topLinkText: menuTitle
    		});
  	    themeCurrent++;
  	  }
	  }
	});

2010-06-08: Edited

Just realized that I should probably upload the fgMenu JavaScript if have seriously modified. I have fixed a lot of bugs and added a new feature (themes). Please contact me if you have any questions.

Here's a simple patch for the change suggested in #6. I agree that this should be an option, but I don't have time to write the functionality.

So if I update to 6.2.3 and apply this patch, will I be able to see sibling menu items? What happens if another version of MenuBlock comes out?

Has this patch been rolled in to dev yet?

I support making this an option - I'm the person who filed the original "no children, don't show siblings either" issue (and still need it that way in some circumstances) - but now I'm working on a site with a different architecture, and have found a compelling use-case for the "show siblings" scenario myself.

I think there are good reasons to make this functionality selectable and transparent, and there's clearly a need for both!

@emdalton If you apply this patch it will get written over by the next version. I don't think it's the best idea to apply it unless you've got a good maintenance log or something, or your site will break. Making it an option with the default behaviour being the current way (no menu) would stop other sites from breaking on upgrade but allow us to use the new functionality going forward if we need it.

Still not rolled into the current version? :( I'll apply the patch again, but I really would like to see this changed for future releases. Is a bounty needed?

I required the ability to show a menu block of "sibling menus" for some pages as well. I was able to achieve this, without patching, with the following method.

1. Create 2 menu blocks, identical.
2. For the menu block that should show siblings, instead of children, set "Starting level" to "Active menu item"
3. Check "Expand all children"
4. Set "Maximum depth" to 1 (unless you want the whole tree)
5. Optionally use some PHPfoo in the block configuration to alternate showing the appropriate menu block.

Hi,

I needed to display a menu block even if there are no children -> display only the title which is set as a link.

I had to hack the module:

 // Render the tree.
  $data = array();
  $title = menu_block_get_title($config['title_link'], $config);
  $data['subject_array'] = $title;
  $data['subject'] = drupal_render($title);
  $data['content']['#content'] = menu_block_tree_output($tree, $config);
 // if (!empty($data['content']['#content'])) {
    $data['content']['#theme'] = array(
      'menu_block_wrapper__' . str_replace('-', '_', $config['delta']),
      'menu_block_wrapper__' . str_replace('-', '_', $config['menu_name']),
      'menu_block_wrapper'
   );
    $data['content']['#config'] = $config;
    $data['content']['#delta'] = $config['delta'];  
 /* }
  else {
    $data['content'] = '';
  }*/

I simply commented out the check if there is no content, and it works great.

Is it possible to add this as an option to the block config - "[] Display menu block even if there are no menu items" so something along those lines.

Thanks

Idan

@arbel, yours is a separate issue. You should create a new issue for it.

oh..ok thought this was the same use case.

Subscribe.

The "[] Display menu block even if there are no menu items" option is needed.
Without #18 hack I saw "Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in theme_blockreference_formatter_title() (line 683 of /sites/all/modules/blockreference/blockreference.module)." when I was creating a view with Menu Blocks for menus without children.

I tried to use #18 hack and nothing changed with my nav menu that had no children, it still shows it as blank when I want it to remain as the same nav, if there are no children

This patch (#11) works for me ( version 7.x-2.3), thanks you

Hi.. I am dealing with the same issue, namley "Ability show items on same level if active menu level don't have children"
but working on a subsite I can't directly patch the Block Menu module.
Does anyone know an alternative to get the same result?
I thought about working on the subtheme template or adding php conditions to the block, but don't have any idea of where to start from..

Attaching a patch against latest 7.x-2.x
This augments #11 with a new follow_parent option, rather than removing the current functionality that follows the children.

Cheers,
Dan

We've been using #11 for over a year. I just tested #26 and it works as expected and I think is better for backwards compatibility.

For anybody using #11, if you switch to #26, you'll need to update your menu blocks config to maintain this behavior. I used an update script in a custom module:

/**
 * Update menu blocks that show children to fallback to siblings.
 */
function MYMODULE_update_7001() {
  if (module_exists('menu_block')) {
    // Find all menu blocks
    $deltas = variable_get('menu_block_ids', array());
    $exported = menu_block_get_exported_blocks();
    $deltas = array_unique(array_merge($deltas, array_keys($exported)));
    foreach ($deltas as $delta) {
      $var = 'menu_block_' . $delta . '_follow';
      if (variable_get($var, FALSE) === 'child') {
        variable_set($var, 'child_or_active');
      }
    }
  }
}

This seems very similar to the patch posted at #1620298: Add new starting level option "Children of active menu item, and active menu item if no children". Can anybody confirm or explain the differences?

I've looked at both patches #758184-26: Show items on same level if active menu level doesn't have children and #1620298-1: Add new starting level option "Children of active menu item, and active menu item if no children" and can confirm that they should be functionally identical (although I did not test the patch in the other issue). The only differences appear to be:

• when they were created
• name of the new option
• comments in this patch to explain how the new option works

In addition to #29 there were actually two other issues (now linked via reference in the sidebar) that provided patches that effectively do the same thing as this issue. I've closed all those as duplicates and will update this to the Drupal 8 version, and provide a patch.

For anyone still looking for the "best" patch for Drupal 7, #26 is probably your best shot.

Here is a Drupal 8 version that uses the underlying field value from #26 but the wording from #1620298-1: Add new starting level option "Children of active menu item, and active menu item if no children", which seems more inline with the field value and doesn't mention siblings, because a given active link may or may not have siblings.

There is a syntax error in the last patch.

#31 works

Cleaned up issue title and summary

This patch seems to work fine for us.

Big addition indeed. Helps keep the menu from just vanishing.

In addition - is there a way to prevent this behavior IF the item is level 0 and has no children? I don't want to show the top level navigation in that case.

You might just be better off creating a second menu block in the same spot that only shows the root items if on that level? I think it might be a bit feature creep to implement those edge cases?

Ran out of time to test and commit this so moving to the next release

Reroll

We have a need for this feature. Additionally we needed the title/label to reflect similarly, where it displays the active item's title when it has children otherwise it displays the parent's title. This patch is a re-roll of #42 with a new block label option that will use the active item's title when the item has children, otherwise uses the parent title.

Reroll

@greenskin, it looks like you merged stuff from a different issue which conflates this issue, I feel like I have seen that elsewhere but haven't been able to spot it. Can someone ensure this is working with what the issue summary suggests on MR21 please?

I am hiding the patches as I would prefer an Merge Request.

Apologies for the noise. I tried to fix the merge request, but it did not go well so I created a new branch that is now mergeable.

I can confirm the MR #36 is a faithful reroll of the patch in #42 (without the extraneous code added in #45 and #46).

Thanks for the work @danielkorte

I can confirm the MR #36 works as well, and it's a good feature for the module.