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Definition

menu_get_menu()
drupal-5/includes/menu.inc, line 199

Description

Return the menu data structure.

The returned structure contains much information that is useful only internally in the menu system. External modules are likely to need only the ['visible'] element of the returned array. All menu items that are accessible to the current user and not hidden will be present here, so modules and themes can use this structure to build their own representations of the menu.

$menu['visible'] will contain an associative array, the keys of which are menu IDs. The values of this array are themselves associative arrays, with the following key-value pairs defined:

  • 'title' - The displayed title of the menu or menu item. It will already have been translated by the locale system.
  • 'description' - The description (link title attribute) of the menu item. It will already have been translated by the locale system.
  • 'path' - The Drupal path to the menu item. A link to a particular item can thus be constructed with l($item['title'], $item['path'], array('title' => $item['description'])).
  • 'children' - A linear list of the menu ID's of this item's children.
Menu ID 0 is the "root" of the menu. The children of this item are the menus themselves (they will have no associated path). Menu ID 1 will always be one of these children; it is the default "Navigation" menu.

Related topics

Namesort iconDescription
Menu systemDefine the navigation menus, and route page requests to code based on URLs.

Code

<?php
function menu_get_menu() {
  global $_menu;
  global $user;
  global $locale;

  if (!isset($_menu['items'])) {
    // _menu_build() may indirectly call this function, so prevent infinite loops.
    $_menu['items'] = array();

    $cid = "$user->uid:$locale";
    if ($cached = cache_get($cid, 'cache_menu')) {
      $_menu = unserialize($cached->data);
    }
    else {
      _menu_build();
      // Cache the menu structure for this user, to expire after one day.
      cache_set($cid, 'cache_menu', serialize($_menu), time() + (60 * 60 * 24));
    }

    // Make sure items that cannot be cached are added.
    _menu_append_contextual_items();

    // Reset the cached $menu in menu_get_item().
    menu_get_item(NULL, NULL, TRUE);
  }

  return $_menu;
}
?>