Automated Menu Creation

This tutorial shows you how to use the [AtlassianConfluence:Macros] to automatically generate self-updating menus...

There are three scenarios where you might want to automate the structure of your menus:

• You have a big menu structure that matches the structure of content in your [space]
• You want to allow other people to add content and have the menus automatically updated
• You're lazy (a bit like me) and don't want to type loads of [AtlassianConfluence:Wiki Markup Editor] to create your menus

If any of those describe you, read on

But first, there are some scenarios where you might want to avoid automating menus:

• Automated menus can't have icons in them (yet... we're working on that feature)
• Automated menus have limited ordering options (alphabetically, date, etc) - if you want a very specific order to items, you'll have to manually add them.
• You can't define custom on-screen text or tool tips when using macros (unless they specifically support such a feature)

So, assuming that you still want to automate your menus, let's begin...

Macros to the Rescue

You can use any macro that outputs an unordered bullet list of items within a menu. Let's take a look at two of them...

{children} macro

This is by far the most common macro to make it's way in to the menu settings:

{menu}[Builder] 
  {children}
{menu}

The [AtlassianConfluence:children macro] basically creates a bulleted list of child pages from a given starting point. The example shown above would look something like this if you put it on a page:

And produces the following menu:

As you can see, there's no other items showing - that's because this page doesn't have any children. However, if we were on a page with children then the list would be generated.

To ensure that children are listed from a specific starting point, use the page parameter as follows:

{menu}[Builder] 
  {children:page=Builder}
{menu}

Which would give:

Which results in the menu:

Voila! That's exactly

how the Builder menu and most other menus are created at the top of pages in this user guide.

{incoming-links:style=disc}* No incoming links{incoming-links}

{menu}[Automated Menu Creation]   
  {incoming-links:style=disc}{incoming-links}
{menu}

Our Navigate Menu

While writing this tutorial, we got a bit carried away playing around with other macros and came up with the idea of a navigate menu:

{menu}Navigate
  {submenu}Incoming Links
    {incoming-links:style=disc}* No incoming links{incoming-links}
  {submenu}
  {menuseparator}
  {submenu}Page Headings
    {wikimenu}{toc:maxLevel=5}{wikimenu}
  {submenu}
  {submenu}Child Pages 
    {children}
  {submenu}
{menu}

Be warned, if you add this menu, it can get very big! We've included it here as an example of the different types of macros that can be used.

Have fun!