Inside Technique : Dynamic Menus
By Scott Isaacs

UPDATE - January 30, 2000
Adds linking capabilities to the root item (menubar items).

Our original menu toolkit makes it easy to create static drop-down menus. Juan Romero created a modified version of our script where the menus are defined in an Access database and generating when the page loads. This approach allows you to define, modify, and update your menus without ever having to touch the HTML page.

We are going to describe Juan's approach to managing and building the menus using Microsoft Access. The Microsoft Access Database has two tables - one containing the list of menu items, and a second table that defines the relationship between each menu item. This relationship defines the menu-hierarchy and (whether a menu-item contains a sub-menu with more choices).

The menu items table is named tblItems and has 12 fields:

ID	An auto-generated unique identifier for the menu item.
Caption	The caption to display for the menu-item.
ToolTip	A tooltip for the menu-item.
Icon	The path to an icon for the menu item.
Visible	Whether or not to display the menu item.
Enabled	Whether or not the menu option is currently enabled or disabled (grayed out).
EffectDate	Date the menu option is to be made available.
EndDate	Date the menu option is to no longer be available.
EnteredDate	The date and time the menu option was added.
EnteredBy	The name of the user who added the option.
URL	A URL to navigate to when the menu option is selected.
Owner	The owner of the content represented by the menu option.

Below we create two sample entries:

Field	Menu Items
ID	57	58
Caption	Links	SiteExperts
Tooltip	Useful Links	Site Experts is a wonderful site for web developers (DHTML,XML,ASP,etc.)
Icon		htmlicon.gif
Visible	True	True
Enabled	True	True
EffectDate	1/19/00 12:42:41 PM	1/19/00 12:42:41 PM
EndDate
EnteredDate	1/19/00 12:42:51 PM	1/19/00 12:42:51 PM
EnteredBy
URL		http://www.siteexperts.com
Owner

This creates two separate menu entries, Links and SiteExperts.com. The next step is to specify that the SiteExperts.com option is a sub-menu of the Links menu choice. This relationship is defined in separate table named tblParents:

ID	The ID of a menu option.
Parent	The ID of the parent menu choice.

To make the SiteExperts.com menu option a child of the Links menu option you need to add a row to this table. The ID field needs to represent the ID of the child (SiteExperts.com) and the parent field needs to represent the parent menu option (Links).

ID	Parent
58	57

To create a top-level menu-item do not make the menu-item a child of any other item. Therefore, the Links menu option is not a child of any other menu-item. This table also supports nested menu items. For example, you can add your favorite SiteExperts.com links as children of the SiteExperts.com menu choice by adding them to to the items table and making SiteExperts.com's ID (58) the parent of those choices.

By combining this access database with the modified script, your menus are all set to go. On the next page, you can download and view the complete script.

© 1997-2000 InsideDHTML.com, LLC. All rights reserved.