How do I get a menu item to send a parameter to a component?

Question

I'm having problems creating an internal redirect using MenuItems.

I've created a menu item called 'sale'. I've found the menu item in the database and the alias is 'sale'. I've set the url to /mycomponent?id=3 and published the menu item, but /sale causes a 404 instead of loading /mycomponent?id=3.

I noticed that there is no alias for external urls, and that there was some debate over if it was needed for internal urls:

http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=29264

I don't want to use the Redirect component for this. We have three environments, and that would involve setting up a redirect in each environment. If I can get the menu item working then it can be transferred between environments.

Is there a way to setup an internal url using menu items? If so how is that accessed by alias?

Answer 1

The solution I went with was to add the parameter (id) to the view's default.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<metadata>
    <layout title="mycomponent">
        <message>mycomponent message</message>
    </layout>
    <fields name="request">
            <fieldset name="request">
                <field
                    name="id"
                    type="text"
                    label="ID"
                    description="The ID of the item as it appears in the url"
                    default="1"
                >
                </field>
            </fieldset>
        </fields>

</metadata>

This way, I was able to create a menu item with an alias of 'sale', and select my component. Then I'd enter '3' in the id field, and /sale would render the same as if I had hit /mycomponent?id=3.

Answer 2

You can't achieve what you are trying to without using some sort of redirect process.

That is the URL [site]/sale needs to be redirected www.google.com (for example)

Using External Links will not solve it - because they are exactly what they are, equivalent of having a href tag as one of your menu items.

In Joomla [site]/path are the URLs to Joomla Aricles/content/components.

Therefore, if a content item [site]/sale does not exist (or is not linked to a published menu item) then you will get a 404.

One other way would be to create an Article called Sale, point to it with a standard Menu item and have some re-direct code on that Article.

But this is very ugly way of doing it.

Answer 3

The question confuses me a little. Not sure what you're wanting, but let me take a shot.

When you pick the menu item type, you get choices based on the components you have installed. For example, if you pick "Single Article" you get to select an article for the menu item to point to.

Now, in the menu item you'll see a terrible mishmash of a URL, beginning with index.php. No biggie, because the only way your visitors will see that is if you don't have any sort of SEF URL creation turned on. That's just the internal representation, not what the users will see.

I'm assuming whatever component you have there works the same way (if it doesn't, find another one because that one's broken). So don't worry about that. The only thing that matters is what Joomla actually writes in the browser (which isn't necessarily what you see in the box).

If you want to completely control what the URL for any given page is, get pretty much any of the SEF URL generators from JED. They all do that.