How do I create menu links programmatically?

Question

I need to add some links to existing menu (or to new) programmatically in Drupal 8.

Answer 1

In order to create a menu item automatically this can be placed in a hook_update_N on the file mymodule.install and will run when the database is updated (/update.php):

use Drupal\menu_link_content\Entity\MenuLinkContent;
$items = array(
  '1' => 'Menuitem 1',
  '2' => 'Menuitem 2',
  '3' => 'Menuitem 3'
);

foreach($items as $nid => $title) {
  $menu_link = MenuLinkContent::create([
    'title' => $title,
    'link' => ['uri' => 'internal:/node/' . $nid],
    'menu_name' => 'main',
    'expanded' => TRUE,
  ]);
  $menu_link->save();
}

You can also create an entire Menu programmatically:

\Drupal::entityTypeManager()
  ->getStorage('menu')
  ->create([
    'id' => 'menu_test',
    'label' => 'Test menu',
    'description' => 'Description text',
  ])
  ->save();

Answer 2

If you would like to create module-defined menu links, add something like this example to your custom_module.links.menu.yml file:

custom_module.admin_item_1:
  title: 'New Admin Item 1'
  parent: system.admin
  description: 'Description of link goes here.'
  route_name: view.some_view_id.page_1

parent (optional) is the id column of the parent in the menu_tree table, and route_name is Drupal's internal route ID for where you'd like the menu item to link to. It's in the menu_tree table as route_name.

See Providing module-defined menu links and Add a menu link for more details and options.

Answer 3

To expand on @skorzh answer and reply to the comment from @Matt, if you want to nest a menu item inside another you have to get the parent id and set it as 'parent'. As an example this code nests the item inside the top level using the variable $top_level below.

  $my_menu = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage('menu_link_content')
    ->loadByProperties(['menu_name' => 'my-menu-name']);
  foreach ($my_menu as $menu_item) {
    $parent_id = $menu_item->getParentId();
    if (!empty($parent_id) {
      $top_level = $parent_id;
      break;
    }
  }
  $menu_link = MenuLinkContent::create([
    'title' => 'My menu link title',
    'link' => ['uri' => 'internal:/my/path'],
    'menu_name' => 'my-menu-name',
    'parent' => $top_level,
    'expanded' => TRUE,
    'weight' => 0,
  ]);
  $menu_link->save();