Create Accordion Menu Using JQuery

Posted by tech on

November 25, 2008

When I had the job interview last weekend, I was asked if I had experience with Accordion Menus. Accordio-what??? I thought it was some kind of Javascript framework for easily creating menus. I was only able to know what it was about until it was workday again and I got to surf for it so I could check what it was exactly. So, an accordion menu is actually a type of a menu that expands content (can be sub menu items or text or image or whatever).

The sample menu that was given to me to modify came from this site. The accordion menu in that URL was created using JQuery and is limited to one level only. There are no sub-menus. I think I did badly in that exam since I have never used JQuery extensively unless they were show() hide() funtionalities. I decided to check JQuery out and try to make it work. What I did was use the same CSS class attributes and changed the code to cater sub-menus no matter how many level(s) a menu item has. The finished code would create an accordian menu that looks like the image on the right. I highlighted the sub-menus as blue and red. I am not much of a CSS stylist so it is up to you to change the existing CSS code to, let’s say, have the text move a bit to the right so that they all won’t be aligned vertically.

Here is the JQuery code

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

$(document).ready(function() {
	var clicked_menu_head;
	var speed = 300;
 
	$('.menu_head').click(function() {
		clicked_menu_head = $(this);
		if (clicked_menu_head.next().is(':visible')) {
			clicked_menu_head.next().slideUp();
			clicked_menu_head.css({backgroundImage:"url(left.png)"});
		}
 
		// if clicked menu head is submenu, check if there are any submenus in it, then hide
		clicked_menu_head.next().find('p.menu_head').each(function () {
			$(this).next().slideUp(speed);
			$(this).css({backgroundImage:"url(left.png)"});
		});
 
		parent_menu_head = clicked_menu_head.parents('div.menu_body').prev(clicked_menu_head.parents('div.menu_body').size()-1);
 
		if (clicked_menu_head.next('div.menu_body').is(':visible')) {
		} else clicked_menu_head.css({backgroundImage:"url(down.png)"}).next('div.menu_body').slideDown(speed);
 
 
		$('#firstpane').children('p').siblings('p').each(function() {
			// loop through each main menu, if not equal, hide all sub menu
			if (parent_menu_head.attr('id')) {
				if (parent_menu_head.attr('id') != $(this).attr('id')) {
					$(this).children('div.menu_body').slideUp(speed);
				}
			} else {
				if (clicked_menu_head.attr('id') != $(this).attr('id')) {
					$(this).css({backgroundImage:"url(left.png)"})
					$(this).next().slideUp(speed).find('p.menu_head').each(function() {
						$(this).next().slideUp(speed);
					});
				}
			}
 
		});
	});
});

And this is the HTML code. I provided 1 menu item sample that has 2 sub-menu levels.

^?View Code HTML4STRICT

<body>
<div style="float:left" > <!--This is the first division of left-->
 
	<p><strong>&nbsp;Works on clicking </strong></p>
 
	<div id="firstpane" class="menu_list"> <!--Code for menu starts here-->
		<p id="header1" class="menu_head">Header-1</p>
		<div class="menu_body">
			<a href="#">Link-1</a>
			<a href="#">Link-2</a>
			<a href="#">Link-3</a>	
		</div>
 
		<p id="header2" class="menu_head">Header-2</p>
		<div class="menu_body">
 
			<div class="menu_list">
				<p id="submenu" class="menu_head">Sub-Menu</p>
				<div class="menu_body">
 
					<div class="menu_list">
						<p id="submenu2" class="menu_head">Sub-Menu 2</p>
						<div class="menu_body">
							<a href="#">Sub Link-12</a>
							<a href="#">Sub Link-22</a>
							<a href="#">Sub Link-32</a>	
						</div>
					</div>
 
					<a href="#">Sub Link-2</a>
					<a href="#">Sub Link-3</a>	
				</div>
			</div>
 
			<a href="#">Link-1</a>
			<a href="#">Link-2</a>
			<a href="#">Link-3</a>	
		</div>
 
		<p id="header3" class="menu_head">Header-3</p>
		<div class="menu_body">
			<a href="#">Link-1</a>
			<a href="#">Link-2</a>
			<a href="#">Link-3</a>			
	   </div>
	</div>  <!--Code for menu ends here-->
 
</div>
 
</body>

Notice that in <p> and div tags (with ID firstpane), I added the attribute ID to give them unique identifier names. This is mandatory in my code because I used the tag’s ID to check if the menu header clicked is a parent menu header or a sub menu header.

Make sure that you have a main container, in this case, firstpane with CSS class menu_list. Next in the CSS sequence are the menu_head and the menu_body (contains your menu items or more sub-menus).

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tags: accordion menu, javascript, jquery

24 Responses to “Create Accordion Menu Using JQuery”

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 [5] Show All

21
tech Says:
July 12th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
hi. thanks for the code snippet. i’m sure others will find this useful.
22
yinka Says:
August 7th, 2010 at 10:44 am
I have searched google for months and i can say you have the best 4 level accordion menu on the internet.
23
tech Says:
August 7th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
@yinka: wow! thank you for the nice compliment
24
addi Says:
August 24th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
@Jean Solis: Thank you for posting your solution to hide an open submenu when a sibling submenu is opened. Could you please show where to insert this snippet into the existing Javascript code, as I have tried but I think I am inserting it in the wrong place as it makes the menu stop working. Apologies, I am just learning Javascript. Thanks, and thank you Tech for the menu.