Inside TYPO3

3.5.5. Function Menu modules

Function Menu modules are integrated in existing backend modules that supports this feature. In the core the modules Web>Info and Web>Function does so. Also Web>Template and even User>Taskcenter does!

Function Menu modules are accessed through the function menu of the host module:

 

In this example the Web>Functions module is the host backend module and the selector box in the upper right corner shows the two Function menu modules attached to Web>Functions. It turns out that the function menu module "Wizards" supports even another level of externally attached scripts - a "second level Function Menu module". The API for adding elements to the second level is the same as for the first.

Attaching Function Menu modules to the host backend module

Function Menu modules live in the environment of the host backend module. Therefore they have no conf.php files etc. All they do is to supply a PHP class which is called when they need to be activated. Like any other module they have to render the content and return it then.

Attaching Function Menu modules to a host backend module is done by adding some values to an array in the global scope. To make this easy there is API function calls to do that which you should use. To create a Function Menu on the first level you would include this code in the "ext_tables.php" file of the extension:

 

  if (TYPO3_MODE=='BE')    {

      t3lib_extMgm::insertModuleFunction(

          'web_func',        

          'tx_temp_modfunc1',

          t3lib_extMgm::extPath($_EXTKEY).'modfunc1/class.tx_temp_modfunc1.php',

          'LLL:EXT:temp/locallang_db.php:moduleFunction.tx_temp_modfunc1'

      );

  }

If you want to insert it on the second level this would be used (for the Wizards example above):

  if (TYPO3_MODE=='BE')    {

      t3lib_extMgm::insertModuleFunction(

          'web_func',        

          'tx_temp_modfunc2',

          t3lib_extMgm::extPath($_EXTKEY).'modfunc2/class.tx_temp_modfunc2.php',

          'LLL:EXT:temp/locallang_db.php:moduleFunction.tx_temp_modfunc2',

          'wiz'    

      );

  }

Notice the only difference; The addition of the fifth argument in the function call pointing to the first level Function Menu item.

Basic framework

The Function Menu module code is found in a class in the scripts pointed to in the configuration. Such a class extends the class "t3lib_extobjbase" which is designed to handle all the basic management of a Function Menu module.

A basic framework for a Function Menu module looks like this:

     1: require_once(PATH_t3lib."class.t3lib_extobjbase.php");

     2: 

     3: class tx_temp_modfunc1 extends t3lib_extobjbase {

     4:     function modMenu()    {

     5:         global $LANG;

     6:         

     7:         return Array (

     8:             "tx_temp_modfunc1_check" => "",

     9:         );        

    10:     }

    11: 

    12:     function main()    {

    13:             // Initializes the module. Done in this function because we may need to re-initialize if data is submitted!

    14:         global $SOBE,$BE_USER,$LANG,$BACK_PATH,$TCA_DESCR,$TCA,$CLIENT,$TYPO3_CONF_VARS;

    15:         

    16:         $theOutput.=$this->pObj->doc->spacer(5);

    17:         $theOutput.=$this->pObj->doc->section($LANG->getLL("title"),"Dummy content here...",0,1);

    18:         

    19:         $menu=array();

    20:         $menu[]=t3lib_BEfunc::getFuncCheck($this->pObj->id,"SET[tx_temp_modfunc1_check]",$this->pObj->MOD_SETTINGS["tx_temp_modfunc1_check"]).$LANG->getLL("checklabel");

    21:         $theOutput.=$this->pObj->doc->spacer(5);

    22:         $theOutput.=$this->pObj->doc->section("Menu",implode(" - ",$menu),0,1);

    23: 

    24:         return $theOutput;

    25:     }

    26: }

    27: 

    28: 

    29: 

    30: if (defined("TYPO3_MODE") && $TYPO3_CONF_VARS[TYPO3_MODE]["XCLASS"]["ext/temp/modfunc1/class.tx_temp_modfunc1.php"])    {

    31:     include_once($TYPO3_CONF_VARS[TYPO3_MODE]["XCLASS"]["ext/temp/modfunc1/class.tx_temp_modfunc1.php"]);

    32: }

From the code you might be able to figure out that the host backend module is available as the object reference $this->pObj. In this code listing it is used to access the document template object for rendering the output.

More details

More details about Function Menu modules and the framework of "t3lib_extobjbase" is found in extension programming tutorials and inside the class "t3lib_extobjbase" itself!