Menu Laravel Package

title: Introduction weight: 1

The spatie/menu package provides a fluent interface to build menus of any size in your php application. If you're building your app with Laravel, the spatie/laravel-menu provides some extra treats.

Human Readable, Fluent Interface

All classes provide a human readable, fluent interface (no array configuration). Additionally, you can opt for a more verbose and flexible syntax, or for convenience methods that cover most use cases.

Menu::new()
    ->add(Link::to('/', 'Home'))
    ->add(Link::to('/about', 'About'))
    ->add(Link::to('/contact', 'Contact'))
    ->render();

// Or just...
Menu::new()
    ->link('/', 'Home')
    ->link('/about', 'About')
    ->link('/contact', 'Contact');

<ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

Strong Control Over the Html Output

You can programatically add html classes and attributes to any item in the menu, or to the menu itself.

Menu::new()
    ->addClass('navigation')
    ->add(Link::to('/', 'Home')->addClass('home-link'))
    ->add(Link::to('/about', 'About'))
    ->add(Link::to('/contact', 'Contact')->addParentClass('float-right'))
    ->wrap('div', ['class' => 'wrapper'])

<div class="wrapper">
    <ul class="navigation">
        <li><a href="/" class="home-link">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
        <li class="float-right"><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
    </ul>
</div

Adding an ID to elements

You can add id, so you can easily target some of these elements with CSS or JS.

Menu::new()
    ->id('navigation')
    ->add(Link::to('/', 'Home')->id('home-link'))
    ->add(Link::to('/about', 'About'))
    ->add(Link::to('/contact', 'Contact'))

<ul id="navigation">
    <li><a href="/" id="home-link">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

Not Afraid of Depths

The menu supports submenus, which in turn can be nested infinitely.

Menu::new()
    ->add(Link::to('/', 'Home'))
    ->submenu('More', Menu::new()
        ->addClass('submenu')
        ->link('/about', 'About')
        ->link('/contact', 'Contact')
    );

<ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li>
        More
        <ul class="submenu">
            <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
            <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

Some Extra Treats for Laravel Apps

The Laravel version of the menu package adds some extras like convenience methods for generating URLs and macros.

Menu::macro('main', function () {
    return Menu::new()
        ->action('HomeController@index', 'Home')
        ->action('AboutController@index', 'About')
        ->action('ContactController@index', 'Contact')
        ->setActiveFromRequest();
});

<nav class="navigation">
    {!! Menu::main() !!}
</nav>

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