Adding joomla menu's

This page continues the tutorial previous page adding feeds.

 

A joomla menu item displays a link to a joomla component on the front end (the site) of joomla. The datafeeds component displays items from the database imported from the datafeeds.

On the previous page two feeds in two groups have been added: fashion and accommodation a set-up could be to have to distinct menu item for each group. The settings for the datafeeds menu item allows to filter items from the database.

Select the desired menu from the 'menus' menu in the joomla administrator. Click 'New' to add a menu and select the 'datafeeds items'

 

First we add a menu for 'Fashion'. To start only two values must be added

a title to the left

the filter to select only the 'fashion' items, this is accomplished with the 'First filter' to the right. Setting the selection on 'Select0' ( this is the group) and the value to 'Fashion'

 

Save an on the frontend there is a Fashion menu, same steps for the accommodation

Putting the two categories together

Another approach would be a use a single menu item for both groups.

The configuration for this looks like:

The 'first filter' is empty, and the Menu Level fields are shifted, the first display's the 'Select0'.

Resulting in an interesting mixture of fashion and accommodation

 

next step is to add modules to navigatie the items

 

How the filters work

The menu filters are simple if 'fields' matches 'string' conditions.

The  field names match to the fields in the feed configuration. if you assign categories consistently to the Select1..Select9 fields you can use the filters to narrow down the items shown in the menu.

 

for example if you assign thee country field to Select1 (in the feed configuration) you can set the 'first filter' to Select1 and use Spain,Italy as string to show only items related to Spain and Italy

• It must be exact matches
• you can use several strings using a comma separated list.
• you can exclude a string using a minus sign '-'
• The field 'merchant' is the naam of the feed from the feed configuration