Create Admin Menu and Controller In Magento 2

We’ll discuss the full workflow for Create Admin Menu and Controller in Magento 2, covering configuration, routing, and implementation.

Route :

If you recall, when we were creating a controller for front-end. The first thing that we created was routes.xml. For admin, we need to create the route file inside etc/adminhtml/routes.xml

Code for etc/adminhtml/routes.xml file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:App/etc/routes.xsd">
    <router id="admin">
        <route id="blogmanager" frontName="blog">
            <module name="Webkul_BlogManager" />
        </route>
    </router>
</config>

As you can see it is very similar to the front-end one. The only thing we have changed here is the router id.

Unlike front-end, in admin we can not directly enter urls in the browser because admin urls are secured with a secret key in Magento by default.

Admin Menu

So we need to create a menu first. To create the menu we need to create menu.xml inside etc/adminhtml/menu.xml

Code for etc/adminhtml/menu.xml file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:module:Magento_Backend:etc/menu.xsd">
    <menu>
        <add id="Webkul_BlogManager::blogmanager" translate="title" title="Blog Management" module="Webkul_BlogManager" sortOrder="10" resource="Webkul_BlogManager::blogmanager"/>
        
        <add id="Webkul_BlogManager::manage" translate="title" title="Manage" module="Webkul_BlogManager" sortOrder="10" resource="Webkul_BlogManager::manage" parent="Webkul_BlogManager::blogmanager" action="blog/manage/index"/>
    </menu>
</config>

Here we have added the menus under the menu tag with add tag. The first menu with the title “Blog Management” is the parent menu and inside that parent menu we have added a child menu with the title “Manage”.

The Id attribute is to give a unique identification for the menu. In the translate attribute, we have mentioned that we want to translate the title. With the title attribute, we can manage the menu’s label.

In the module attribute, we mention the module name with which this menu is related. We can position the menus with the sortOrder attribute.

The resource attribute is related to Access Control List (ACL). It is required when we create different admin roles. We will learn about ACL later.

If the menu is a child menu of some menu then we need to mention the parent menu’s id in the parent attribute.

With the action attribute, we give the URL that we want to browse when this menu is clicked. It should be infrontName/controllerName/actionName format.

If you check on the admin side you will see our menu as –

Controller :

Now let’s create the controller file. For all the controller files related to admin, we need to create an Adminhtml folder under the Controller folder.

To create the index action we need to create the Controller/Adminhtml/Manage/Index.php file –

Code for Controller/Adminhtml/Manage/Index.php file –

<?php
namespace Webkul\BlogManager\Controller\Adminhtml\Manage;

use Magento\Backend\App\Action;
use Magento\Backend\App\Action\Context;
use Magento\Framework\View\Result\PageFactory;

class Index extends Action
{
    /**
     * @var Magento\Backend\App\Action\Context
     */
    protected $context;

    /**
     * @var Magento\Framework\View\Result\PageFactory
     */
    protected $resultPageFactory;

    /**
     * Dependency Initilization
     *
     * @param Context $context
     * @param PageFactory $resultPageFactory
     */
    public function __construct(
        Context $context,
        PageFactory $resultPageFactory
    ) {
        parent::__construct($context);
        $this->resultPageFactory = $resultPageFactory;
    }

    /**
     * Provides content
     *
     * @return \Magento\Framework\View\Result\Page
     */
    public function execute()
    {
        $resultPage = $this->resultPageFactory->create();
        $resultPage->setActiveMenu('Webkul_BlogManager::manage');
        $resultPage->getConfig()->getTitle()->prepend(__('Manage Blog'));
        return $resultPage;
    }

    /**
     * Check Autherization
     *
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function _isAllowed()
    {
        return $this->_authorization->isAllowed('Webkul_BlogManager::manage');
    }
}

All the actions in admin will extend \Magento\Backend\App\Action class. The content of execute function is very straightforward.

We have set our menu as active by providing the id in the setActiveMenu function. And we have also set the page title.

The _isAllowed() method is used for ACL purposes. Here we pass the resource id in isAllowed function.

Now if you click on the menu it should redirect to the index page –