Using hook_menu to add a child to a menu item

Question

So I create a menu item called Sponsorship in administration in the following way:

function eac_sponsorship_menu() {
  $items['admin/sponsorship'] = array(
    'title' => 'Sponsorship',
    'description' => 'This is where all of the child sponnsorship data is stored',
    'page callback' => 'system_admin_menu_block_page',
    'file path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'system'),
    'file' => 'system.admin.inc',
    'access callback' => 'user_access',
    'access arguments' => array('access sponsorship section'),
    'plid' => 1,
    'weight' => -500,
    'expanded' => TRUE,
  );
    return $items;
}

If I want to create another menu item directly after this, in the same function, how do I make it a child to this previously defined 'Sponsorship' menu item?

I have seen examples that use a DB lookup to get the plid value. This seems a bit counter intuitive bearing in mind I've only just created the Sponsorship menu item, is there a simple way to do this using the API?

For example

$items['admin/sponsorship/child'] = array(
  'plid' => //simple API function to get admin/sponsorship mid?
}

Edit

I think I've just answered my own question...I don't need to define plid, the path of the array $items is enough:

$items['admin/sponsorship/child'] 

Is this correct?

Answer 1

An example child item would just fall under the parent item in the path hierarchy, no need for plid.

e.g

  $items['admin/sponsorship/child'] = array(
    'title' => 'Sponsor child',
    'description' => 'This is where all of the child sponsorship data is stored',
    'page callback' => 'mymodule_sponsor_child_page',
    'access arguments' => array('access sponsorship section'),
    'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM
  );

system_menu has some good examples of menu item containers, using system_admin_menu_block_page, e.g admin/appearance/*

Make sure you clear menu cache to get any new menu item to show up there.