Modifying control panel menus

I’d like to add links for these modules to the control panel’s top menu so they can be easily accessed by users. Is there a way to programmatically add menu items when modules or other addons are installed?

Take a look at the Layout Class docs.

The layout class appears to control the content tabs for publish and edit pages. I need to modify the control panel’s main navigation menu, controlled by the Menu class in expressionengine/libraries/Menu.php. Are there any plans on making the main navigation menu customizable?

Thanks, Jack

I’ll have to check with the team on this one. I will update this thread when I hear something.

Thanks!

If it doesn’t exist, it’s a great feature request.

It’d be awesome to be able to add e.g. a menu item called “View customers” to the “Members” menu for instance.

subscribing to thread

All I really need is the ability to add two or three top-level menu tabs, each with a handful of submenus. I think I can add this capability with a well placed extension hook. I do like Bjorn’s idea of adding submenus to existing tabs.

I have a prototype control panel menu extension working. It adds menus to the control panel top-of-page menu bar, inserting them between the standard EE menus and quicktabs. The extension requires an extension hook added to expressionengine/libraries/Menu.php. Near line 259, change:

// Main menu, custom tabs, help link - in that order
$menu_string  = $this->_process_menu($menu);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu($this->_fetch_quick_tabs(), 0, FALSE);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu(array('help' => $this->generate_help_link()));

to:

// Main menu, custom menu, custom tabs, help link - in that order
$menu_string  = $this->_process_menu($menu);
$custom_menu = $this->EE->extensions->call('cp_menu_add_tabs');
if (is_array($custom_menu))
{
    $menu_string .= $this->_process_menu($custom_menu, 0, FALSE);
}
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu($this->_fetch_quick_tabs(), 0, FALSE);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu(array('help' => $this->generate_help_link()));

Once the hook is in place, adding a set of custom menu tabs becomes a simple matter of creating an extension that generates a menu array.

Can we add this extension hook to the EE2 codebase?

Yeah, I second that, having this possibility would be awesome.

While building my monster EE2 Web App, I ran into a situation where I had to rewrite the control panel menus instead of merely adding new tabs. I added a second extension hook to Menu.php that allows modification of the $menu array, similar to how the sessions_end hook allows modifications to the Sessions object.

In expressionengine/libraries/Menu.php, near line 259, change:

// Main menu, custom tabs, help link - in that order
$menu_string  = $this->_process_menu($menu);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu($this->_fetch_quick_tabs(), 0, FALSE);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu(array('help' => $this->generate_help_link()));

to

// Main menu, custom tabs, help link - in that order
$this->EE->extensions->universal_call('cp_menu_rewrite_tabs', $menu);
$menu_string  = $this->_process_menu($menu);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu($this->_fetch_quick_tabs(), 0, FALSE);
$menu_string .= $this->_process_menu(array('help' => $this->generate_help_link()));

This extension hook provides much more flexibility than the one I submitted previously in this thread. It allows an extension to add menu items to the existing menu, change menu items or remove them completely. Please consider adding this extension hook to future versions of Expression Engine.