Making menu items visible/invisible according to user role

***i'm curious about this too - bookmarking for later***

Add the code between begin and end hack to the appropriate place in menu.inc, this works alongside any of the access control modules to hide nodes on menus that the user's role has no access to.

/**
 * Determine whether the given menu item is accessible to the current user.
 *
 * Use this instead of just checking the "access" property of a menu item
 * to properly handle items with fall-through semantics.
 */
function _menu_item_is_accessible($mid) {
  $menu = menu_get_menu();

  // Follow the path up to find the first "access" attribute.
  $path = isset($menu['items'][$mid]['path']) ? $menu['items'][$mid]['path'] : NULL;
  // ** Begin hack **
  if (substr($path, 0, 5) == 'node/') {
    $nid = substr($path, 5);
    if (is_numeric($nid)) {
      $node = node_load($nid);
      return node_access('view', $node);
    }
  }
  // ** End hack **
  while ($path && (!isset($menu['path index'][$path]) || !isset($menu['items'][$menu['path index'][$path]]['access']))) {
    $path = substr($path, 0, strrpos($path, '/'));
  }
  if (empty($path)) {
    // Items without any access attribute up the chain are denied, unless they
    // were created by the admin. They most likely point to non-Drupal directories
    // or to an external URL and should be allowed.
    return $menu['items'][$mid]['type'] & MENU_CREATED_BY_ADMIN;
  }
  return $menu['items'][$menu['path index'][$path]]['access'];
}

http://drupal.org/node/16542
This works well for me

.o.oOo.o.

Me I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly it's the honest ones you have to watch out for, you never can predict if they're going to do something incredibly stupid. -Jack Sparrow

I think another way to do this is to setup your roles. Then add menu items with a "path" that points to an item that can only be accessed by that role. So, you could have a parent menu item called "my special area" that links to a view that can only be accessed by a certain role. Then just add child items to the parent. Then it's cool since the parent is protected and so are the children since they also can be restricted by role. Easy with view links, haven't tried with other content types. Works great with cck nodes since they have built in access control. To restrict certain pages or stories you'd have to used something link simple access module though I haven't tested if it will work the same way with menu items.

I thought of this since I could get cck child menu items to hide based on access control. But the parent "stub" menu item always appeared. But if the parent's path points to some access controlled area than it will be hidden as well. It's a hack but works for me.

Note that this works for a block containing a menu, not individual items. But it is a solution for hiding menus based on role. See below for a potential future solution that can handle individual items.

It is trivial to achieve this using the user_access() function in the right spot.

Go to your blocks configuration and find the block that is home to your menu (for example LeftNav). In that block configuration, choose "Show if the following PHP code returns TRUE (PHP-mode, experts only)." Put the following PHP code into the box:

return user_access('administer nodes');

Now, only roles with 'administer nodes' permission (under admin > access control) will see this menu.

FWIW I have also created a "Context Menus" module that can control individual items in exactly this same manner on the admin > menus configuration page, but haven't had the time to release it... send me an email if you're interested in it.

I wouldn't know how to actually code it but something to this effect? Override the theme function to detect a string from the description field. So, if you type 'administer nodes' into the description the function would see it and act accordingly. I know, it's ugly but just thought I'd throw this out here.

theme_menu_item
theme_menu_item_link

function phptemplate_menu_item($mid, $children = '', $leaf = TRUE) { 

  global $user;
  $user_role = $user->roles; //array

  if (<some find function>($user_role, $mid[]['description']) {
    return '<li class="'. ($leaf ? 'leaf' : ($children ? 'expanded' : 'collapsed')) .'">'. menu_item_link($mid) . $children ."</li>\n"; 
  } else {
    return false;
  }
} 

FAKE CODE!! DON'T USE

Or even better, couldn't you adapt that hack to this theme override.

–joon

Hello, I needed something similar, and discovered that by using Taxonomy Access Module (in case your nodes can have taxonomy terms assigned to them) works like magic. No menu items show up to unauthorized people... who do not belong to the right role.

Roman

PS: Haven't read what was written above, so I apologise for possible repetitions

I wanted to do something similar; show Navigation menu for admin only and show a site menu for anon users only. This way the admin menu wouldn't be cluttered with the site menu. To do that I had to create an addition menu grouping in MySQL:

insert into menu(mid,pid,path,title,description,weight,type)
values((select id+1 from sequences where name = 'menu_mid')
,0,'','Main links','',1,115)

#update sequence table with new menu id
update sequences
set id = 89 #new menu id
where name = 'menu_mid'

#move old menu items from navigation to main. In this case those with a weighting of less than 0
update menu
set pid = 89 #new menu id
where pid = 1 and weight < 0

Then I went to Administrator->Site Building->Blocks and set the Main menu to be on the left sidebar, saved, then clicked on the configure link and set Show block for specific roles: to anonymous users only.

Some solutions for Drupal 6?

http://drupal.org/node/227418

Use http://drupal.org/project/menu_per_role. Having installed it just go into the the menu item(s) u wish to be hidden to users based on their roles and make the restrictions on the roles, it's shown by checkboxes.

Hi...I faced same problem i have two types of user 'user' and 'emp' and i wann show some menu items according to defined roles....please comments...