How can I create menu links to external URLs?

Question

With my module MYMODULE I would like to create external link and place it into main menu. Is it possible to do that in MYMODULE.links.menu.yml file or MYMODULE.routing.yml?

Something like this???

mymodule.links.menu.yml

mymodule.googlecom:
  title: 'Google'
  route_name: 'googlecom'
  menu_name: main

mymodule.routing.yml

googlecom:
  path: 'http://google.com/'

Answer 1

mymodule.menu_external_link:
  title: 'External link'
  url: 'https://www.drupal.org'
  menu_name: main
  weight: 10
  options:
    attributes:
      target: _blank
      class: my-class

Answer 2

routing.yml are routes of your site, so they can not be external.

links.menu.yml are links that point to routes, so they can not be external.

To create external links, you need to create them as a menu link content entity in your hook_install() function.

Something like this:

  $menu_link = MenuLinkContent::create(array(
      'title' => 'Link title',
      'link' => ['uri' => 'https://www.example.com'],
      'menu_name' => 'navigation',
      'weight' => 0,
      'external' => TRUE,
      'bundle' => 'menu_link_content',
    ));
  $menu_link->save();