How can I create a view of child nodes based on the menu relationship?

Question

Say you have the following pages in a menu tree:

• Projects
  • Project One
  • Project Two
  • Project Three

I'm looking for a way to create a view that will be embedded in the Project (parent) page that will show a pic, title and text (summary) from the child pages.

The relationship between the parent and the children is defined in the menu tree.

I know I can use node reference, but that would mean every time someone creates a page they would have to define the menu relationship and then the node reference relationship.

Also I know that I could create another content-type but I think this is overkill as all content pages look the same.

Answer 1

One solution is to use taxonomy terms to define the relationships and then to use the Taxonomy Menu module to translate those term relationships into menu items. You can then use the Custom Page module and Context modules to control information and regions on all the pages if you don't want to use panels.

Answer 2

You can do exactly this using the Menu Node API and the Menu Node Views modules.

Create a view with your required content type, and choose a contextual filter of "Menu: Menu link ID" (this is only available with the above modules installed).

Under, "When the filter value is not available," select "Provide default value" and choose "PHP code."

The following snippet will do it, then you just expose a block from the view and you are there:

if (function_exists('menu_node_get_links')){  
   $node = node_load(intval(arg(1)));  
   if (isset($node->menu_node_links)){
      foreach($node->menu_node_links as $mlid=>$data){  
         return $mlid;
      }  
   }
}

Answer 3

The Node Hierarchy Module allows this type of relationship, as well as providing a views integration.

Node Hierarchy allows nodes to be children of other nodes creating a tree-like hierarchy of content. The module offers:

• 1-Click creation of hierarchical menus

• Hierarchical breadcrumbs

• Automatic hierarchical urls using Pathauto (and token module)

  (eg: q=aboutus/history/beginning).

• Automatic creation of hierarchical menus if desired.

• Optional Views integration.

• Optional Node Access integration.

Answer 4

Maybe this has changed for D7/Views 3, but you don't need any PHP in order to accomplish the desired behavior:

1. install menu_views, menu_node and menu_node_views modules.
2. create a new view of type "menu tree"
3. add fields "Menu: link title" and "Menu: description"
4. Add Contextual Filter/Argument "Menu: Node ID"; Provide default value "Content ID from URL"
5. Add Relationship "Menu: Parent menu link id"

voila. It shouldn't work, but it does.

It works fine with just nodes, but the advantage of using menu links over node hierarchy is that you're not limited to building navigation around nodes. You could even include external links in your view.

Answer 5

There's a relatively new module Views Menu Node Children Filter that seems to do exactly what you want:

This module adds a contextual filter to Views that will retrieve a node's child nodes according to a menu's structure.

Answer 6

Have you considered using Node Reference for this purpose?

1. Provide a node reference field to the content type you want to display.
2. Use that field as a contextual filter in the View (default value: Content ID from url).
3. Add this view display as a block to the content. The node in which it's being displayed will be seen as a parent of the nodes that reference to it for instance.

Thus you can achieve a similar outcome as you're probably looking for.

Answer 7

The answer from Emile is right, but I had to paste the mentionned PHP code in a contextual filter of the type " Menu: Parent menu link id ".

if (function_exists('menu_node_get_links')){  
   $node = node_load(intval(arg(1)));  
   if (isset($node->menu_node_links)){
      foreach($node->menu_node_links as $mlid=>$data){  
         return $mlid;
      }  
   }
}

Answer 8

If you use entity translation and the node is attached to different menus, here is an adaptation of the code that filters on the current language. You need to copy this as PHP code for the contextual filter (parent menu link id) in your view like explained in the other answers

 if (function_exists('menu_node_get_links')) {
global $language;
$lang = $language->language;
$node = node_load(intval(arg(1)));
if (isset($node->menu_node_links)) {
  foreach ($node->menu_node_links as $mlid => $data) {  
    if ($lang == $data->language) {
      return($mlid);
    }
  }
}
  }

Answer 9

From the issue queue of Menu Node Views we have this nice solution :

• add a contextual filter with 'Parent menu link id',
• select 'Provide default value'
• select 'custom php code'

• enter the following code

  $menu_item = menu_get_active_trail();  
  $current_item = array_pop($menu_item);  
  $menu_item_plid = $current_item['plid'];  
  return $menu_item_plid;