Drupal adding external links to custom menus

Question

I am trying to add a custom menu to Drupal 7 but it seems that I am not able to handle external links in hook_menu as they don't get inserted into the database. When I change the implementation to use menu_link_save, internal menu items don't get saved in the menu route table so they don't show up. Is there a way to implement a custom menu that will be displayed in the footer that contains both normal menu items and links to external websites?

Answer 1

hook_menu() is really only for internal paths by design and as such external paths don't belong in the menu_router table. There is a little trick you can do to make internal paths that you define immediately redirect to the external site, using drupal_goto() as your page callback:

$items['my_internal_path'] = array(
  'title' => 'Title',
  'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  'access arguments' => array('access content'),
  'page callback' => 'drupal_goto',
  'page arguments' => array('http://external-site.com/')
);

Hope that helps

Answer 2

This is not true, atleast not now.

You can add external items like this

$items['http://facebook.com/'] = array(
  'title' => t('Facebook'),
  'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  'access arguments' => array('access content'),
  'menu_name' => 'menu-footer'
);