Get the number of menu elements? (Parents)

Question

I want to write a new Joomla template. How can I obtain the number of parent elements in my menu?

So far i tried this:

$app = JFactory::getApplication();
$menu = $app->getMenu();
$menu_items = $menu->getItems('menutype', 'topmenu');
// var_dump($menu_items);
foreach($menu_items as $i)
{
    if($i->parent == 1)
    {
        $itemCounter++;
    }
}

but at the end i get the wring number :(

Answer 1

A more effective method to get all the menu items that are on the top level (level 1) and part of the menu called "mainmenu" (default menu):

// Get default menu - JMenu object
$menu = JFactory::getApplication()->getMenu();

//Gets menu items by attribute (level == 1 and menutype == mainmenu)
$items = $menu->getItems(["menutype","level"],["mainmenu",1]);

//Show all menu items
var_dump($items);

Answer 2

It's not very clear what you're asking and what you expect to get, but try changing if($i->parent == 1 to if($i->level).

This should give you the number of top-level menu items in your main menu:

<?php
$app = JFactory::getApplication();
$menu = $app->getMenu();
$menu_items = $menu->getItems('menutype','mainmenu', false);
$itemCounter = 0;
foreach($menu_items as $i)
{
    if($i->level == 1)
    {
        $itemCounter++;
    }
}
echo $itemCounter;
?>