How to avoid bloat in Zend_Navigation?

Question

I've been researching using Zend_Navigation in combination with Zend_Acl to manage navigation and access permissions in a new app I'm working on.

One thing that really bothers me, is the examples I have seen end up making an enormous XML file that contains every possible nav item in the application. Loading this file on every request seems like major performance bottleneck and there has to be a better way. I realize I could alleviate much of that with the use of memcached or another caching mechanism, but I feel like the application itself should be written in the most optimal way and, only then, do you add caching. It doesn't make sense to make something slow and bloated and rely on caching to clean up my dirty work.

I'm using a modular setup in this ZF app, so each module has a unique bootstrap. I've considered creating module specific nav XML files and loading the specific one, but I'm not sure if that's the best way either.

What is the suggested method of using Zend_Navigation in large application with potentially hundreds of navigation paths?

Answer 1

I wouldn't call this the suggested method it's just how I work with it when I basically had the same question two years ago. In a nutshell: I have all the paths in the XML I need on each and every single page. All other paths are added at run time. Only then I add the ACL.

First, be aware that ACL in Zend_Navigation only manages the presentation of the navigation. It doesn't provide or better guarantee access control to your application. A certain link will be missing in the menu but if the user knows the correct path s/he may access the resource nevertheless. Of course, you can use the ACL information in the navigation object to bolt down your application but I believe there are smarter ways mainly to incorporate ACL directly into controllers and models.

Second and to your main question, my navigation's XML file only contains the most basic structure up to the second level which is the menu I always need. It's also more or less what I have controllers and actions for. Any paths resulting from params are added at run time. Because of that I don't even include the ACL into the XML but inject it at run time. Simply because only then do I have the full extended current branch with all its paths.

Answer 2

I've not used XML to generate navigation. It is possible to add your pages at run-time in php using array notation.

Using modules, you could set up the navigation object in the registry, in each module have a model that adds its pages, and a plugin that calls each modules' navigation model at preDispatch.