Hide Menu Items and/or empty module

ATK Howto: Hide Menu Items and/or empty module Complexity: Advanced Author: Meinaart van Straalen <meinaart@zicht.nl>

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Issue

If you use the built-in security features for ATK you might have come accros the following scenario. If an user doesn't have rights on any of the nodes inside a module the module still appears in the main menu. This default behaviour is a little bit strange because when you click on a "empty" module you will only get the "back to Main menu" link. In this HowTo I will describe how you can hide a module from the main menu if there are no accessible nodes.

Solution

It is possible to set the conditions of a node-menuItem for appearing in the menu. This is also possible for the parent menuitem in a slightly different way.

class mod_bestellingen extends atkModule 
{
  function getMenuItems() 
  {
    // securtiyConditions is a 1 dimensional array containing
    // pairs of nodename and the right the user should have for it
    // to appear in the menu. 
    $securityConditions = array("bestellingen.orders","admin",
                                "bestellingen.items","admin");

    // Parent menu item
    $this->menuitem("bestellingen", "", "main", $securityConditions);
			
    // Add child items, only visible if parent menu item is visible
    $this->menuitem( "orders", 	
                     dispatch_url("bestellingen.orders", "admin"),
                     "bestellingen",
                     array("bestellingen.orders","admin"));

    $this->menuitem( "items",
                     dispatch_url("bestellingen.items", "admin"),
                     "bestellingen",
                     array("bestellingen.items","admin"));
  }
}

This is just an example of the getMenuItems function. If you use this you should of course also have a getNodes function with the proper rights.

Another solution

I found out that a module will not appear in the mainmenu if there are no menuitems added. So another solution I came up with is checking if the user has rights on the node before adding it to the menu. You could also use your own custom ways to determine if a menuitem should be added. The example below does exactly the same as the example code above but is much more customizeable.

class mod_orders extends atkModule 
{
  function getMenuItems() 
  {
    // Get an instance of the security manager
    $securityManager =