Quick-and-dirty ZF2: Zend\Navigation

Quick-and-dirty introduction to using Zend\Navigation in Zend Framework 2.

(1) Add Service Manager Factory

Add the following to your module configuration file (config/module.config.php) or place it in an autoloadable file in your application's config/autoload folder:

'service_manager' => array(
    'factories' => array(
        'Navigation' => 'Zend\Navigation\Service\DefaultNavigationFactory',
    ),
);

This tells ZF2′s Serivce Manager to load the default Zend\Navigation instance factory. This factory will read a page tree from the application configuration and register a new instance of the navigation data container (Zend\Navigation\Navigation) with the service manager under the name Navigation.

(2) Configure Sitemap

For each module in your application you will need to construct a sitemap for the routes exposed by that module. As an example, here is one that I use with ZfcUser in my own application:

<?php
// config/autoload/nav_zfcuser.global.php
return array(
    // All navigation-related configuration is collected in the 'navigation' key
    'navigation' => array(
        // The DefaultNavigationFactory we configured in (1) uses 'default' as the sitemap key
        'default' => array(
            // And finally, here is where we define our page hierarchy
            'account' => array(
                'label' => 'Account',
                'route' => 'zfcuser',
                'pages' => array(
                    'home' => array(
                        'label' => 'Dashboard',
                        'route' => 'zfcuser',
                    ),
                    'login' => array(
                        'label' => 'Sign In',
                        'route' => 'zfcuser/login',
                    ),
                    'logout' => array(
                        'label' => 'Sign Out',
                        'route' => 'zfcuser/logout',
                    ),
                    'register' => array(
                        'label' => 'Register',
                        'route' => 'zfcuser/register',
                    ),
                ),
            ),
        ),
    ),
);

(3) Using the View Helpers

Now that you’ve set up the necessary configuration, all that’s left to do is use it! There are a number of bundled view helpers which you can use to inject navigation components into your views.

Example: Breadcrumbs

To render breadcrumbs add the following line to one of your views (I put it in my application’s layout view):

<?php echo $this->navigation('Navigation')->breadcrumbs(); ?>

Example: Menu

To render a sidebar navigation menu, add the following line to the location in your view script where you want the menu rendered:

<?php echo $this->navigation('Navigation')->menu(); ?>

This view helper also provides additional methods for altering the output. For example, to display only the active branch of the menu, append the call setOnlyActiveBranch(true) like so:

<?php echo $this->navigation('Navigation')->menu()->setOnlyActiveBranch(true); ?>