Django Flex Menus

A flexible, developer-friendly Django package for building dynamic, context-aware navigation menus with minimal boilerplate.

Features

• Flexible API: Simple Menu and MenuItem classes for building flexible tree structures using the anytree API.

• Flexible Rendering: Reusable class-based renderers that can be used with any menu structure.

• Flexible URL resolution: Django view names, static URLs, or callable functions with automatic parameter filtering

• Flexible Visibility: Show/hide items based on user permissions, authentication, request attributes, database objects.

Installation

pip install django-flex-menus

Add to INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'flex_menu',
]

Quick Start

1. Define a menu (e.g., in myapp/menus.py):

from flex_menu import Menu, MenuItem

# Create main navigation
main_nav = Menu(
    "main_nav",
    children=[
        MenuItem(name="home", view_name="home"),
        MenuItem(name="about", view_name="about"),
        MenuItem(
            name="products",
            children=[
                MenuItem(name="product_a", view_name="products:detail"),
                MenuItem(name="product_b", view_name="products:detail"),
            ],
        ),
    ],
)

2. Use in templates with URL parameters:

{% render_menu 'main_nav' slug="product-a" %}

3. Configure renderers (in settings.py):

FLEX_MENUS = {
    "renderers": {
        "bootstrap5": "myproject.renderers.Bootstrap5NavbarRenderer",
        "sidebar": "myproject.renderers.Bootstrap5SidebarRenderer",
    },
}

3. Render in template:

{% load flex_menu %}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My Site</title>
</head>
<body>
    {% render_menu 'main_nav' renderer='bootstrap5' %}
    <!-- CSS/JS automatically included before the menu -->
</body>
</html>

Documentation

• Getting Started
  • Installation
  • Configuration
  • Create Your First Menu
  • Menu Structure Basics
  • URL Resolution
  • Next Steps
• Building Menus
  • Menu Class
  • MenuItem Parameters
  • Menu Item Types
  • Providing Extra Context
• Manipulating Menus
  • Basic Capabilities from anytree
  • Additional Methods from Django Flex Menus
  • Practical Examples
  • Further Reading
• Template Usage
  • Template Tags
  • Common Patterns
  • Processed Menu Properties
  • Caching
  • Renderer Selection
  • Error Handling
  • Best Practices
• Visibility Checks
  • Basic Usage
  • Check Function Signature
  • Built-in Checks
  • Combining Checks
  • Custom Check Functions
  • Context-Aware Checks
  • Parent-Child Visibility
  • Debug Check
  • Check Function Reference
  • Best Practices
• Custom Renderers
  • Renderer Basics
  • Creating a Renderer
  • Depth-based Templates
  • Adding Media
  • Custom Context Data
  • Handling Special Cases
  • Complete Example
  • Template Examples
  • Registering Your Renderer
  • Error Handling
  • Advanced: Renderer Instance
  • Best Practices
• API Reference
  • flex_menu

Contributing

• Testing standards
• Code documentation standards

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.