Module menu updating limitation

juggernautsei · November 7, 2022, 12:20am

I have a question about the ModuleMenuSubscriber class.
When building modules, I have noticed that I can’t put a main menu link anywhere I want to. I think I have figured out where the limitation occurs. It is here.

github.com

openemr/openemr/blob/f472e155a9cac74b6b1fad30ba64d5ab808ce4b9/interface/modules/zend_modules/module/Application/src/Application/Listener/ModuleMenuSubscriber.php#L53

      
        
            }
            
            
/**
             * We inject our module system menu updates when the OpenEMR menu system has been updated.
             * In this case we add any modules that have registered as 'hook's to the Modules sub menu
             * and the reports sub menu.
             *
             * @param MenuEvent $menu
             * @return MenuEvent
             */
            public function onMenuUpdate(MenuEvent $menu)
            {
                $menuItems = $menu->getMenu();
                // we are working with objects so this will modify the objects in memory
                foreach ($menuItems as $menuItem) {
                    // We don't use the label as the menu's have been translated at this point
                    // We want to update the modules
                    if ($menuItem->menu_id === 'modimg') {
                        $this->updateModulesModulesMenu($menuItem);
                    } elseif ($menuItem->menu_id === 'repimg') {
                        $this->updateModulesReportsMenu($menuItem);

It appears to me that there are only two places the main menu can be added to by a module and that would be reports and the module menu. Is that correct?

If it is correct, do you know why this limitation was imposed?

Thanks!

adunsulag · November 7, 2022, 1:40pm

So this comes from ZH’s original hooks code and allows people from the module settings GUI to specify their module as having hooks into the reports or the modules menu system. It was something they setup leveraging the onMenuUpdate event.

You don’t have to use this particular mechanism at all. If you listen to the same menu event of onMenuUpdate you can modify anything in the menu structure that you want. I believe that’s how I setup my skeleton module to operate as I don’t use the module hooks structure that ZH setup at all.