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Choose your navigation approach

Tomas Nosek
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Whether displayed as a website menu or navigation in your mobile app, navigation builds a hierarchy in your project.If you model your navigation, content creators can manage navigation menus without developer assistance.

Choose a suitable navigation approach

Navigation is composed of content items based on a content type dedicated to navigation. Define the relationships in the navigation using a subpages element if you use Web Spotlight or with a linked items element in other cases. When modeling the navigation, decide whether to bind content to the navigation or keep them separate.

Navigation bound to content

This way, items that you link in the subpages or linked items element also hold the content. While this approach is more straightforward for understanding the concept, it isn’t suitable for omnichannel delivery. That’s why it’s more suitable for smaller projects or projects that use one way of navigation for all channels.

Navigation separate from content

If you separate navigation from content, you’re creating two items for content linked from your navigation. The first is for the content itself; the second is for a navigation item that links the first one.
This way is better for larger projects prepared for omnichannel content.
Tip: See how separated navigation works in practice in the multi-site sample project that is prepared to handle omnichannel content.

Build your navigation

Using Web Spotlight?If your project comes with Web Spotlight, some steps are already done for you. Check out what's created automatically after Web Spotlight is activated.

1. Create a content type for navigation items

Create a new content type and add elements needed for your channel. In the code examples below, this type is called the Navigation item. It typically contains:
  • A text element for the title of the navigation item (Title in the code sample)
  • A subpages or linked items element for child menu items (Subpages)
  • A linked items element for the content itself (Content)
  • A URL slug element if you’re building website navigation (URL)

2. Define your root

You need to define where your navigation begins. While websites typically have a homepage, other structures may have a root or main screen. You can use the content type created for navigation for the root navigation item or create a different content type for this purpose. Websites usually benefit from having a separate content type for their homepage. That’s because homepages have a unique appearance and contain a different layout and content than other pages. The code example below uses the navigation item for the homepage, created with the name Root navigation item.

3. Create your navigation items

Create content items using the created navigation content type and link them with the subpages or linked item element.
When finished, publish the root together with all its linked items.

4. Retrieve your navigation items

Developers now need to request the items via the Delivery API to generate your menu. Specify the depth parameter to retrieve more than one level of subpages or linked items if you want to show all navigation with one API call.
  • TypeScript
// Tip: Find more about JS/TS SDKs at https://kontent.ai/learn/javascript
import { createDeliveryClient } from '@kontent-ai/delivery-sdk';
import { Article } from './models/Article';
import { NavigationItem } from './models/NavigationItem';

const deliveryClient = createDeliveryClient({
  environmentId: '8d20758c-d74c-4f59-ae04-ee928c0816b7',
});

// Gets navigation items and their linked items
let root: NavigationItem;
const rootResponse = await deliveryClient.item<NavigationItem>('root_navigation_item')
  .depthParameter(5)
  .toPromise();

root = rootResponse.data.item;

// Gets specific elements of all articles
let articles: Article[];
const articleResponse = await deliveryClient.items<Article>()
  .type('article')
  .elementsParameter(['title', 'url'])
  .toPromise();

articles = articleResponse.data.items;

5. Display navigation

Using the retrieved data, display the navigation as you prefer. It can be your sections in a mobile app or smartwatch, or it can be a menu on a website like this:
The content of the linked items is inside the modular_content property of the response. And that’s it! You now have a dynamic menu that your content creators can manage entirely from Kontent.ai.
Microsites and proofs of conceptIf you’re building a microsite or just a quick proof of concept and need navigation fast, you can hardcode the navigation. No part of your navigation is modeled in Kontent.ai; it’s all in the code. See our sample application as an example. We discourage using hardcoded navigation for larger live projects.

Set up breadcrumbs for navigation

Setting up breadcrumbs gives users a clear navigational path and quick access to related pages. If you have thought out and modeled your navigation, you can use the linked items element you already have in your Navigation item content type. You can include different subpages linked to the items you wish to display as breadcrumbs.When your website fetches content, it retrieves these linked items and displays their content and links. You can use the hierarchy you created to display the navigation. The navigation items are used as parents that currently display the content, like the diagram below:
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