17.2.2.1. The general idea

To met the above requirements, the Treemenu block for PHP-Nuke adapts the well-known Treemenu concept to a PHPNuke Block and creates a PHPNuke block containing a Treemenu which looks as in Figure 17-3.

When the user clicks on an item like "Links", the subtree under this item is unfolded (Figure 17-4).

A further click on the subcategory "My work" will reveal another level of groups (Figure 17-5).

Finally, a click on a subsubcategory like "Linux" will unfold the "leaves" of the Treemenu (Figure 17-6).

Of course, the naming and nesting of categories and/or items is fully arbitrary. The above functionality can easily be adapted to suit more advanced needs too (see refinements of the PHP-Nuke Treemenu).

17.2.2.2. What is Treemenu

The Treemenu block makes use of a Treemenu in a PHPNuke Block. Treemenu is a PHP class created by Bjorge Dijkstra (original script to be found Treemenu Class from Bjorge) and adapted by Denny Shimkoski (his version to be found in Treemenu from Denny). Chris have fixed some bugs in the latter one and integrated it into a Treemenu block for PHP-Nuke.

There are two ways you can use the Treemenu class - Chris uses the one that takes as input a simple text file and creates a tree menu, in a style that most users are familiar with from a graphical file manager (see Figure 17-3). Navigation through such a tree is done intuitively by expanding and collapsing the various tree levels by clicking on the node icons (the icons are discussed in custom node icons for the PHP-Nuke Treemenu).

To create a Treemenu, once you have written the input text file with your favorite text editor (see input file method for the Treemenu) or used the alternative method to fill the nodes and leaves of the Treemenu, you just have to write this 3-liner to get it up and running:

include("blocks/treemenu/treemenu.inc");
$tree = new TreeMenu("a", "blocks/treemenu/sitemap.txt");
$tree->show();

	Note
	In order to be able to display the output of the above code in a PHPNuke Block, we have to capture it in an output buffer with the ob_start(), ob_get_contents() and ob_end_clean() mechanism: ob_start(); include("blocks/treemenu/treemenu.inc"); $tree = new TreeMenu("a", "blocks/treemenu/sitemap.txt"); $tree->show(); $output = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); $content = $output;

See Treemenu block for PHP-Nuke for more information of how to use the Treemenu block as a module block for PHP-Nuke.