Menu Templates

Hugo makes no assumptions about how your rendered HTML will be structured. Instead, it provides all of the functions you will need to be able to build your menu however you want.

The following is an example:

<!-- sidebar start -->
<aside>
    <ul>
        {{ $currentPage := . }}
        {{ range .Site.Menus.main }}
            {{ if .HasChildren }}
                <li class="{{ if $currentPage.HasMenuCurrent "main" . }}active{{ end }}">
                    <a href="#">
                        {{ .Pre }}
                        <span>{{ .Name }}</span>
                    </a>
                </li>
                <ul class="sub-menu">
                    {{ range .Children }}
                        <li class="{{ if $currentPage.IsMenuCurrent "main" . }}active{{ end }}">
                            <a href="{{ .URL }}">{{ .Name }}</a>
                        </li>
                    {{ end }}
                </ul>
            {{ else }}
                <li>
                    <a href="{{ .URL }}">
                        {{ .Pre }}
                        <span>{{ .Name }}</span>
                    </a>
                </li>
            {{ end }}
        {{ end }}
        <li>
            <a href="#" target="_blank">Hardcoded Link 1</a>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="#" target="_blank">Hardcoded Link 2</a>
        </li>
    </ul>
</aside>

Section Menu for Lazy Bloggers

To enable this menu, configure sectionPagesMenu in your site config:

sectionPagesMenu = "main"

The menu name can be anything, but take a note of what it is.

This will create a menu with all the sections as menu items and all the sections’ pages as “shadow-members”. The shadow implies that the pages isn’t represented by a menu-item themselves, but this enables you to create a top-level menu like this:

<nav class="sidebar-nav">
    {{ $currentPage := . }}
    {{ range .Site.Menus.main }}
    <a class="sidebar-nav-item{{if or ($currentPage.IsMenuCurrent "main" .) ($currentPage.HasMenuCurrent "main" .) }} active{{end}}" href="{{ .URL }}" title="{{ .Title }}">{{ .Name }}</a>
    {{ end }}
</nav>

In the above, the menu item is marked as active if on the current section’s list page or on a page in that section.

Site Config menus

The above is all that’s needed. But if you want custom menu items, e.g. changing weight, name, or link title attribute, you can define them manually in the site config file:

menu:
  main:
  - identifier: blog
    name: This is the blog section
    title: blog section
    url: /blog/
    weight: -110

[menu]

  [[menu.main]]
    identifier = "blog"
    name = "This is the blog section"
    title = "blog section"
    url = "/blog/"
    weight = -110

{
   "menu": {
      "main": [
         {
            "identifier": "blog",
            "name": "This is the blog section",
            "title": "blog section",
            "url": "/blog/",
            "weight": -110
         }
      ]
   }
}

Menu Entries from the Page’s front matter

It’s also possible to create menu entries from the page (i.e. the .md-file).

Here is a yaml example:

---
title: Menu Templates
linktitle: Menu Templates
menu:
  docs:
    title: "how to use menus in templates"
    parent: "templates"
    weight: 130
---
...

Using .Page in Menus

If you use the front matter method of defining menu entries, you’ll get access to the .Page variable. This allows to use every variable that’s reachable from the page variable.

This variable is only set when the menu entry is defined in the page’s front matter. Menu entries from the site config don’t know anything about .Page.

That’s why you have to use the go template’s with keyword or something similar in your templating language.

Here’s an example:

<nav class="sidebar-nav">
  {{ range .Site.Menus.main }}
    <a href="{{ .URL }}" title="{{ .Title }}">
      {{- .Name -}}
      {{- with .Page -}}
        <span class="date">
        {{- dateFormat " (2006-01-02)" .Date -}}
        </span>
      {{- end -}}
    </a>
  {{ end }}
</nav>