Add support for custom menus for Custom Object Types (COTs)

[christianbur]

Plugin Version

0.6.0

Proposed functionality

Custom Object Types (COTs) should optionally support a menu property.

If no menu is configured, the COT behaves exactly as it does today and is displayed under Custom Objects.

If a menu is configured, all COTs with the same menu name should appear under their own top-level navigation entry in NetBox. The existing Groups functionality should continue to organize COTs within each menu.

The configured menu should also be used for displaying Object Links on object detail pages.

Currently, PR #482 groups all COT links into a single Custom Objects tab:
#482

Instead, Object Links should be grouped by their configured menu:

• COTs without a menu continue to appear in the Custom Objects tab.
• Each configured menu gets its own Object Links tab using the menu name.
• If an object has links from COTs belonging to multiple menus, multiple tabs should be displayed—one for each menu.

This makes the configured menu the primary organizational element in both the navigation and the object detail view while remaining fully backward compatible.

Use case

As the number of Custom Object Types grows, the Custom Objects menu becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, especially when multiple independent projects or domains are implemented using COTs.

Examples include:

• CMDB extensions
• Asset Management
• Firewall Management
• Business Applications
• Compliance
• Documentation

Although Groups help organize COTs, they still appear under a single Custom Objects menu.

By introducing an optional menu property, independent domains can have their own dedicated navigation entry while preserving the existing grouping within each menu.

The same menu structure should also be reflected on object detail pages by grouping Object Links into tabs based on the configured menu instead of placing all links in a single Custom Objects tab.

External dependencies

None

[bctiemann]

Note that support for this functionality will need to be implemented in core NetBox, so a corresponding feature request (for customizable or extensible sidebar navigation menu options and will be necessary to be opened against the https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox repo, and cross-linked to this one for tracking. @christianbur could you please open that FR, something like: "Support dynamically-provided plugin menus (multiple top-level menus from a single plugin, determined at render time)" (so it can be easily found)

[christianbur]

Thanks, agreed.

This does not require a NetBox core change if startup-time registration is acceptable.

A workable implementation in netbox-custom-objects would be:

• add an optional menu_name field to CustomObjectType
• read all distinct menu_name values during plugin startup
• register one additional top-level plugin menu for each of those names
• keep COTs without menu_name in the normal Custom Objects menu
• use the same menu_name split for linked-object tabs/sections

Example field:

class CustomObjectType(...):
    menu_name = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True, db_index=True)

Example startup-time helpers:

def _cot_menu_name(cot):
    return (getattr(cot, "menu_name", "") or "").strip()

def _distinct_menu_names():
    return sorted({
        name.strip()
        for name in CustomObjectType.objects.exclude(menu_name="").values_list("menu_name", flat=True)
        if name and name.strip()
    })

def register_menu_name_menus():
    for menu_name in _distinct_menu_names():
        registry["plugins"]["menus"].append(_make_menu_name_menu(menu_name))

Example split for linked objects:

def _group_linked_objects_by_menu(rows):
    grouped = {}
    for row in rows:
        menu_name = _cot_menu_name(row.field.custom_object_type)
        grouped.setdefault(menu_name, []).append(row)
    return grouped

Behavior would be:

• no menu_name -> stays under Custom Objects
• same menu_name -> grouped into one dedicated top-level menu
• linked-object display follows the same grouping

The only limitation is that new menu names would appear after a NetBox restart, because the top-level menus are registered at startup.