Joomla tips and tricks

- STEFi - 2009-12-01 15:48:18
several joomla templates and compoments developer tips and tricks: breadcrumbs navigation inside content component, css list menu separator...

CSS list menu separator

Usual horizontal menu delimiter is pipe "|". There is no any feature like this in the mod_mainmenu in Joomla 1.5.x. In menu module parameters there is separator value that it is used only in case of rendering menu as a table. It is not clean usage of table anymore. The easiest way to create css separator is use override method inside yours template.

1. Create "html/mod_mainmenu" folder inside your template folder.

complete path to this folder: joomla-home/templates/your-template-name/html/mod_mainmenu/

2. Copy default.php from modules/mod_mainmenu/tmpl to created folder.

3. Edit default.php and change
this:

	if ($node->name() == 'ul') {		

		foreach ($node->children() as $child)

		{

			if ($child->attributes('access') > $user->get('aid', 0)) {

				$node->removeChild($child);

			}

		}		

to

	if ($node->name() == 'ul') {		

		foreach ($node->children() as $child)

		{

			if ($child->attributes('access') > $user->get('aid', 0)) {

				$node->removeChild($child);

			}

		}		

		$children_count = count($node->children());		

		foreach ($node->children() as $child) {

		    if ($children_index == 0) {

			$child->addAttribute('class', 'first');

		    }

		    if ($children_index == $children_count - 1) {

			$child->addAttribute('class', 'last');

		    }

		    $children_index++;

		}	

	}

Breadcrumbs navigation inside content component

Sometime graphic designers became crazy and place breadcrumbs navigation in the middle of content. How to solve it. I use again small trick from Joomla forum. I disable bradcrumbs module in module manager. And overwrite com_content for rendering breadcrumbs module directly.

My example:

folder:
my-template/html/com_cocntent/section/

file (I made changes only in this template):
blog.php

change:
I need to place navigation after section description... added code on line 31 after endif of description block:

<?php // ls 20091201 - breadcrumbs

	  $document = &JFactory::getDocument();

          $renderer = &document->loadRenderer('module');

          $Module = &JModuleHelper::getModule('mod_breadcrumbs');         

          echo $renderer->render($Module);

 ?>