Building Menus

Movable Type allows you to add menus and menu items to the main navigation of the main Movable Type application. This is a great way for you to provide convenient links to your users and an intuitive way in which to access your plugin.

Creating a New Menu

The following sample code will add a new menu labeled "My Menu" with a single menu item called "Upload Video."

name: Example Plugin for Movable Type
id: Example
description: This plugin is an example plugin for Movable Type.
version: 1.0
applications:
    cms:
        menus:
            mymenu:
                label: 'My Menu'
                order: 600
            mymenu:video:
                label: 'Upload Video'
                mode: 'video_upload'
                order: 301
                args: 
                    '_type': "blog"
                permission: 'manage_assets,publish_post'
                view: blog

Adding Items to an Existing Menu

The following sample code will add a menu item labeled "My Objects" to Movable Type's "Manage" menu:

name: Example Plugin for Movable Type
id: Example
description: This plugin is an example plugin for Movable Type.
version: 1.0
applications:
    cms:
        menus:
            manage:myobjects:
                label: 'My Objects'
                mode: 'list_myobjects'
                order: 301
                args: 
                    '_type': "blog"
                permission: 'manage_assets,publish_post'
                view: blog

Here is a list of the menu IDs that Movable Type ships with that you are free to extend:

  • create
  • manage
  • design
  • prefs
  • tools

Registry Properties

  • label - the name of the menu item as it will appear in the menu

  • mode - the app mode that will be invoked when you click the link. Note: this will require you to define and register an app mode with the same name as the value of this property.

  • dialog - as an alternative to mode one can specify dialog which will spawn a dialog window that invokes the mode with the name assigned to the dialog property

  • order - the order or placement as it will appear in the list.

  • permission - a comma delimited list of required permissions in order for this menu item to be active for the current user

  • args - a list of key/value pairs of query string parameters that will be appended to the link associated with this menu item

  • view - valid values are "blog" or "system" and they determine whether the menu item should appear in the blog context menu set or the "System Overview" menu set.

This page was last updated on 2008-10-08, 16:06. [Edit]

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