Active a menu <li> when the menu entry is a view page

Question

I have a section (call news) that have an "home page". This home page is created via "views" and via "views" I have insert a link item into "main menu" menu based on path (/news). When I go to /news the relative entry in "main menu" is active (the <li> item has "active-trail" class). All works.

How can I active the same menu when I'm into a node of type news ? I have read that I need to use menu_tree_set_path() into a hook_preprocess_page(). So I have tried to add this line into THEME_preprocess_page(&$vars) :

menu_tree_set_path('main-menu','/news');

but it does not work. I have tried with:

menu_tree_set_path('main-menu','news');

Same result. Not working.

In all my search, all tutorials tells to set for the second parameter of menu_tree_set_path a node/NID or a taxonomy/term/NID, but I have not this node/nid. I have a view page path.

So, How can I do it ? Thanks.

Answer 1

I guess you could achieve this with Menu Position module, where you can set an active parent for specific node/content types.

https://www.drupal.org/project/menu_position

Answer 2

I had to do a trick like that once. I just used menu_set_active_item() but I had to manage the breadcrumb display too and here is my piece of code for that:

// Activate the View menu item but memorize the actual nature of the node for the breadcrumb
function mymodule_node_view($node, $view_mode, $langcode) {
  if ($node->type == "news" && $view_mode == "full") {
    $_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail'] = serialize(menu_get_active_trail());
    $_GET['mymodule_node_id'] = $node->nid;
    menu_set_active_item("news");
  }
  else {
    if (isset($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail'])) {
      unset($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail']);
    }
  }
}
// Alter the breadcrumb to show the real path to your news node
function mymodule_menu_breadcrumb_alter(&$active_trail, $item) {
  if ($item && $item['path'] == "news") {
    if (isset($_GET['mymodule_node_id'])) {
      if (isset($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail'])) {
        unset($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail']);
      }
    }
    if (isset($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail'])) {
      $original_active_trail = unserialize($_SESSION['mymodule_active_trail']);
      if (is_array($original_active_trail)) {
        $total = count($active_trail);
        $active_trail[$total] = $item;
      }
    }
  }
}