is there a way to use a view as a menu in drupal?

Question

I want to have a view displayed as a menu either in primarylinks or secondarylinks.

I searched and looked up all modules with no luck.

should I build this functionality manually ==> build a module?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Primary and secondary links (in fact, all menus) are rendered as unordered lists of links using a theme function like theme_links(). You can get pretty close to the same functionality by using the HTML List style within a view.

You can't duplicate it exactly because Drupal's menu system requires static menu items: it doesn't handle wildcards like the results of a query.

That is, Drupal's menu system is cached, and is only rebuilt upon request (e.g. by adding a menu item manually, clearing the cache, etc.) A view, on the other hand, is a wrapper to a query: every time you access the view, unless it too is cached, it runs a query to get the latest results.

So, if you were to inject a view into a menu, it'd only be the results at the time of first request, and any subsequent changes would require rebuilding the menu.

The solution I suggested will let you keep the functionality of the view, theme it to look like a menu, and avoid the caveats of the menu system.