[menu object].sectionIndex

This is a property that all menu objects share. If it is set, then the menu will not consist of links to pages on the "next level" but rather of links to the parent page to the menu, but in addition "#"-links to the cObjects rendered on the page. In other words, the menu items will be a section index with links to the content elements on the page (by default with colPos=0!).

.sectionIndex = [boolean]

If you set this, all content elements (from tt_content table) of "Column" = "Normal" and the "Index"-check box clicked are selected. This corresponds to the "Menu/Sitemap" content element when "Section index" is selected as type.

.sectionIndex.type = "all" / "header"

If you set this additional property to "all", then the "Index"-checkbox is not considered and all content elements - by default with colPos=0 - are selected.

If this property is "header" then only content elements with a visible header-layout (and a non-empty 'header'-field!) is selected. In other words, if the header layout of an element is set to "Hidden" then the page will not appear in the menu.

.sectionIndex.includeHiddenHeaders = [boolean]

If you set this and sectionIndex.type is set to "header", also elements with a header layout set to "Hidden" will appear in the menu. This was the default behaviour until TYPO3 4.6 and with this property you can enable this old behaviour again.

.sectionIndex.useColPos = [integer /stdWrap]

This property allows you to set the colPos which should be used in the where clause of the query. Possible values are integers, default is "0".

Any positive integer and 0 will lead to a where clause containing "colPos=x" with x being the aforementioned integer. A negative value drops the filter "colPos=x" completely.

Example:

tt_content.menu.20.3.1.sectionIndex.useColPos = -1

The data-record /Behind the scene

When the menu-records are selected it works like this: The parent page record is used as the "base" for the menu-record. That means that any "no_cache" or "target"-properties of the parent page are used for the whole menu.

But of course some fields from the tt_content records are transferred. This is how it is mapped:

$temp[$row[uid]]=$basePageRow;
$temp[$row[uid]]['title']=$row['header'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['subtitle']=$row['subheader'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['starttime']=$row['starttime'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['endtime']=$row['endtime'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['fe_group']=$row['fe_group'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['media']=$row['media'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['header_layout']=$row['header_layout'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['bodytext']=$row['bodytext'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['image']=$row['image'];
$temp[$row[uid]]['sectionIndex_uid']=$row['uid'];

Basically this shows that

- the field "header" and "subheader" from tt_content are mapped to "title" and "subtitle" in the pages-record. Thus you shouldn't need to change your standard menu objects to fit this thing...

- the fields "starttime", "endtime", "fe_group", "media" from tt_content are mapped to the same fields in a pages-record.

- the fields "header_layout", "bodytext" and "image" are mapped to non-existing fields in the page-record

- a new field, "sectionIndex_uid" is introduced in the page record which is detected by the function TYPO3CMSCoreTypoScriptTemplateService->linkData(). If this field is present in a page record, the linkData()-function will prepend a hash-mark and the number of the field.

Note:

You cannot create submenus to sectionIndex-menus. That does not make any sense as these elements are not pages and thereby have no children.