Give books the option to be treated as menus [#328699]

In the 6.x book architecture I've noticed that it stores everything in the book table as a mlid / menu reference. It then stores these values in the menu_links table as being associated to JUST that book (of the form book-toc-*). This is great except unlike the rest of the menu structures that exist via creation in menu, it doesn't do an insert into menu_custom (and anywhere else it would need to) in order to be treated as a menu (If you want to test what change this would be, change one of the values in the menu_name column of the menu_custom table to be book-toc-1 after making a book).

This may seem like a subtle change but then projects could standardize on catering JUST to menus and menu handling instead of having to account for books way of working which is similar yet different (like DHTML Menu, Nice Menus, and any of the slue of projects that do menu helper functions). This small "hack" that I propose allows books to utilize Nice menus when they won't support it atm. I'm not suggesting this change to account for a public project but instead of remove the architectural differences that exist between menus and books because they are EXTREMELY similar. A simple check box on the book creation form for something like "Synchronize menu and book hierarchy" would allow for them to be "synced up" by writing the correct entry to one database table. This way the advantages of both could be leveraged in their entirety because you could have pages that have:
* prev / next pagination
* "Short titles" when displayed in menus instead of potentially reaaaallly long book page titles
* Use of books structured content by cool usability modules like DHTML, Nice and anything else out there

I'm going to be writing this "hack" into one of my modules for a 6.x version but figured it might be something everyone would want the option to do because of the flexibility it could provide

Comments

Comment #1

keinstein CreditAttribution: keinstein commented 23 August 2009 at 21:37

If you do that, please stay in sync with the menu_node module. We had recently some issue with duplicate entries, which are removed now, but would come back if you don't honour this module. For further information see #526756: Duplicate entry errors on menu item update.

I would like if the book module could make just special menus. And I would like the idea to have the opportunity to grant access based on book chapters. This could be achieved by this unification.

Comment #2

j0rd CreditAttribution: j0rd commented 23 October 2009 at 20:00

I'd like to see more integration between Books and Menus myself.

Here's what I'm doing, which high lights some shortfalls of the book module alone, which integrating it further into the menu system could resolve.

I'm generating a nice_menu based off the books menu entries. This is mildly hackish, but works fine:

  $books = book_get_books();

  $primary = '<ul class="nice-menu nice-menu-down" id="nice-menu-book">';
  foreach($books as $nid => $book) {
      // use this is you have a single root you want to turn into a menu
      //$menu = theme('nice_menus_tree', $book['menu_name'], $book['mlid'], $depth = -1, $m = NULL);
      // use this if you have a book for root menu item
    $menu = theme('nice_menus_tree', $book['menu_name']);
    $primary .= $menu['content'];  
  }

My issue is that some of the titles of these nodes are too long for the menu. Ideally I would like to maintain, a menu title and a node page title. Currently this is not possible with the book module. Deeper integrations into the menu system would allow this. Currently I'm hacking in this functionality using form_alter & menu_links.options & hook_alter_links.

Another issue I have is that I'd like to be able to link in other content into my menu aside from just the books. Things like Views or module pages. Since the book module only deals with it's own content, I'm unable to add the extra items into the menu.

I'd like to see something a little more robust than the book module. Abstracting the functionality out, which would provide us a simple way of storing all our content in a hierarchical tree easily with minimal setup and fuss.

Comment #3

Damien Tournoud CreditAttribution: Damien Tournoud commented 23 October 2009 at 20:02

Version:

7.x-dev

» 8.x-dev

Comment #4

btopro CreditAttribution: btopro commented 23 October 2009 at 22:48

Why is this part of core (optional) anyway? It's a glorified menu add-on which, don't get me wrong, I use for everything. It seems more a "drupal does books hooray" then something that really is a necessity to most sites. Drops drupal's footprint, gives it the ability to move and get closer to menus on it's own.