Dynamic Tree with JSTree, PHP and MySQL

I got huge response from my previous article How to Create Dynamic Tree View Menu, Most of the readers asked about how to use the checkbox with this and drag and drop features.

In this article, I am creating a dynamic tree menu with checkbox using jstree jquery tree view plugin, PHP and MySQL. Dynamic means all nodes of the tree menu depend upon the server side processing.

I am using the same database structure like the previous tutorial How to Create Dynamic Tree View Menu,

Why Choose JStree:

jsTree is a very popular jQuery tree plugin to create an awesome multi-level menus. The jsTress is free, open-source jquery treeview plugin, that helps to create an interactive tree menu using HTML & JSON data sources and AJAX loading. jsTree is easily extendable, them-able and configurable. It has a built-in mobile theme for responsive design and various callback methods.

jsTree jQuery Tree Plugin main Features are:

• drag & drop support
• keyboard navigation
• inline edit
• create and delete
• tri-state checkboxes
• fuzzy searching
• customizable node types

You can also check other tutorial of TreeView Menu,

• Part 1 – Dynamic Tree with JSTree, PHP and MySQL
• Part 2 – Create, Rename and Delete Node using JSTree,PHP and MySQL
• Part 3 – Advanced jstree with search and custom href attribute using php and mysql
• Tree Menu Using HTML and Jquery
• How to Create Dynamic Tree View Menu
• 10+ Most Popular jQuery Tree Menu Plugin

Video Tutorial:

If you are more comfortable in watching a video that explains Dynamic Tree with JSTree, PHP and MySQL, then you should watch this video tutorial.

Create a Dynamic Tree using PHP, MySQL and jquery

So we are using the below files to create a dynamic treeview using jstree jquery tree plugin, php and MySQL. Its very easy and simple, The project structure are follows:

1. dist folder: This folder will contain all js/css and images files.
2. index.php: This file is used to display tree menu.
3. response.php: This file is used to fetch tree nodes from the database and convert them into json object.

Step 1: Create a Table structure to store tree menu nodes. We need to create a ‘test’ database(if you have then don’t need it) and created it below 'treeview_items' table into this database.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `treeview_items` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `text` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `parent_id` varchar(11) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Step 2: Created connection with MySQL into (response.php) file.

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
$dbname = "test";

$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname) or die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
/* check connection */if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
    exit();
}

Step 3: Created PHP array of all tree nodes and encode it into json(response.php) file.

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `treeview_items` ";
$res = mysqli_query($conn, $sql) or die("database error:". mysqli_error($conn));
    //iterate on results row and create new index array of data
    while( $row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($res) ) { 
        $data[] = $row;
    }
    $itemsByReference = array();

// Build array of item references:
foreach($data as $key => &$item) {
   $itemsByReference[$item['id']] = &$item;
   // Children array:
   $itemsByReference[$item['id']]['children'] = array();
   // Empty data class (so that json_encode adds "data: {}" ) 
   $itemsByReference[$item['id']]['data'] = new StdClass();
}

// Set items as children of the relevant parent item.
foreach($data as $key => &$item)
   if($item['parent_id'] && isset($itemsByReference[$item['parent_id']]))
      $itemsByReference [$item['parent_id']]['children'][] = &$item;

// Remove items that were added to parents elsewhere:
foreach($data as $key => &$item) {
   if($item['parent_id'] && isset($itemsByReference[$item['parent_id']]))
      unset($data[$key]);
}
// Encode:
echo json_encode($data);

Step 4: Included all js/css files of jsTree into index.php file.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.0/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf8" src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.8.2.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/style.min.css">
<script src="dist/jstree.min.js"></script>

Step 5: Created tree menu container in index.php.

<div id="tree-container"></div>

</pre>

Step 6: Call jstree method on div container.

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){ 
    //fill data to tree  with AJAX call
    $('#tree-container').jstree({
    'plugins': ["wholerow", "checkbox"],
        'core' : {
            'data' : {
                "url" : "response.php",
                "plugins" : [ "wholerow", "checkbox" ],
                "dataType" : "json" // needed only if you do not supply JSON headers
            }
        }
    }) 
});
</script>

You can see here, we are using "checkbox" plugin to create a check-box against each node. We are passing JSON data to jstree method.

You can download source code and Demo from below link.