Sub Navigation Implementation Approach

[hungerstar]

Currently I have a site that I’m upgrading to use a responsive web design approach. I’m reworking a lot of the HTML and CSS.

I’m struggling with how to implement the code for the Sub Navigation. I’m using a multi-dimensional array that looks like this:

$sub_navigation = array(



'link one' => array(

'url' => 'link-one/',

'section' => array( 'Home', 'About' ),

'priority' => 1,

),



// second link



// third link

);

I have a function that quick loops through the $sub_navigation array and adds the links and the markup based on a $section variable. This array is kind of big (via lines of code) and I don’t want to use it in my HTML, i.e.

$sub_navigation = array (

// code...

);



// custom function to build sub navigation with markup

echo get_sub_navigation( $sub_navigation, $section );



?>

I also feel that this is kind of dirty. It’s a little ambiguous to where $sub_navigation variable came from and I just want as little PHP code mixed into my markup as possible.

include 'sub-navigation.php';



// custom function to build sub navigation with markup

echo get_sub_navigation( $sub_navigation, $section );



?>

I use a header.php that contains the Main and Sub Navigations. I also don’t like the idea of doing this in header.php:

I could potentially move the sub-navigation.php include to be included right after I include header.php.

I only have so much time and flexibility to “improve” this so I can’t do anything too radical.

I am a self taught web developer. Now and then I run into trouble with code/application approaches or design patterns.

Any and all help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[Author]

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