🍽️ Strapi Plugin – Menu Navigation

The last menu builder you’ll ever need for Strapi v5. Structured, nested, dynamic—and absolutely elegant.

Because your menus deserve more than JSON blobs and copy-paste configs.

🚀 What Is It?

A high-level plugin for managing navigational menus and links in Strapi. Supports nested menu items, intuitive CRUD interfaces, and frontend-ready output.

Designed for:

• Content-rich portals
• Headless frontend frameworks
• Multi-level navigations
• Projects that value sanity

✨ Features

• ✅ Create & manage menus via admin panel
• ✅ Nestable items with drag-and-drop style UX
• ✅ Recursive relationships (child > parent)
• ✅ Dynamic UID generation from title
• ✅ Fast API endpoints for headless consumption
• ✅ One-click delete (items + hierarchy)
• ✅ Sensible codebase: no dark magic

🧠 Data Model

Menu

| Fields | type | description | | :----- | :------- | :------------------- | | title | string | Display label | | slug | uid | URL-friendly ID | | items | relation | One-to-many MenuItem |

MenuItem

| Fields | type | description | | :-------- | :------- | :---------------------------- | | title | string | Item label | | url | string | Target URL | | target | enum | _self, _blank, etc. | | order | integer | Position index | | parent | relation | Parent MenuItem (for nesting) | | children | relation | One-to-many nested MenuItems | | menu | relation | Belongs to a Menu |

🖥️ Admin Panel UX

• Create menu + nested items via a structured editor
• Preview menu trees visually
• Edit each item inline
• Recursive child editing
• Optimistic autosave coming soon™

📦 API Endpoints

Method Endpoint Description GET /menus Get all menus GET /menus/:id Get single menu with tree POST /menus Create a menu and items PUT /menus/:id Update menu and all items DELETE /menus/:id Nuke menu and all linked items

🧙‍♂️ Example Output

{
  "id": 1,
  "title": "Main Menu",
  "slug": "main-menu",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": 101,
      "title": "Home",
      "url": "/",
      "target": "_self",
      "children": []
    },
    {
      "id": 102,
      "title": "About",
      "url": "/about",
      "children": [
        {
          "id": 103,
          "title": "Team",
          "url": "/about/team",
          "children": []
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Use this directly on your frontend. You’re welcome.

🔐 Permissions

Grant access to:

• plugin::strapi-plugin-menu-navigation.access

Optional: fine-grained control coming in v1.1+

🛠 Dev Notes

• Clean architecture: schema > service > controller
• Uses native strapi.entityService APIs
• Minimal logic in routes — composable and extendable
• Auto-populates nested relations up to n-levels
• Deletion is recursive, safe, and satisfying

🧼 TODO (next updates)

• 🧩 Drag-and-drop UI
• 🟢 Soft-delete & versioning
• 🚀 Public consumption API toggle
• 🧠 Role-based menu visibility
• 📤 Menu export/import
• ⚡ Fast cache option

🧬 Philosophy

Structure brings peace. This plugin delivers both.

Built by developers who know the pain of spaghetti menus and static configs. Enjoy it. Fork it. Share it.

🤝 Author

LPIX-11 – https://github.com/LPIX-11

⸻