Multiple instances of Zend_Navigation per Zend_View

I came across an interesting issue recently when attempting to register multiple Zend_Navigation instances to the same view.

I wanted to have a global navigation container and a footer navigation container within the same request. Naturally, I proceeded as followed (simplified):

$config1 = new Zend_Config_Xml(CONFIG_PATH . "/navigation/global.xml", "nav");
$config2 = new Zend_Config_Xml(CONFIG_PATH . "/navigation/footer.xml", "nav");

$nav1 = new Zend_Navigation();
$nav1->addPages($config1);

$nav2 = new Zend_Navigation();
$nav2->addPages($config2);

echo $this->view->navigation($nav1);
echo $this->view->navigation($nav2);

However, I received two navigation outputs, both referencing the first configuration file.

var_dump($nav2->getPages());

This showed that the pages were being pulled in from the config correctly. So it seems that I can’t register two navigation helpers in the same view instance?

$view = new Zend_View();
echo $this->view->navigation($nav2);

This confirmed that this was indeed the case, with my output exactly as I wanted.. Hardly a good work-around, however.

The issue is that when we set the Zend_Navigation_Container in Zend_View_Navigation_Abstract::__construct(), it establishes the default navigation container in Zend_View_Helper_Navigation_HelperAbstract. When it comes to rendering a new navigation instance, the default navigation helper’s (Zend_Navigation_Menu) render function is passed a null value. Despite the second instance of Zend_Navigation setting the new container as default, the original container is pulled out instead.

My favourite solution for this? Simply bypass this functionality by forcing Zend to render each container exclusively:

echo $this->view->navigation()->render($nav1);
echo $this->view->navigation()->render($nav2);

A quick poke around on the web led me to http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-6865. It seems this has been a problem for a while and “won’t fix”.

If editing framework code at was at all acceptable, maybe my solution would have been something like this (see Zend_View_Helper_Navigation::render()):

public function render(Zend_Navigation_Container $container = null)
{
	if(null === $container) {
		$container = $this->getContainer();
	}
	$helper = $this->findHelper($this->getDefaultProxy());
    
	return $helper->render($container);
}

Truth is, I’m sure this wasn’t included for a very good reason…