App menu configuration in the Purple Experience

Each Purple App comes with an app menu (accessible by clicking on the menu icon in the top left corner or with a screen swipe from left to right in the app).

The app menu is a global app UI component which is used for navigation. It consists of a header area, dynamic entries and a footer area. The configuration of this menu happens in the app_menu.xml file that is located in the dynamic resources: default/app_menu.xml.

Purple provides a "neutral" preconfigured app menu in the standard dynamic resources. You can use this or overwrite or extend it, in order to customize it to your needs.

If no navigationNode with the action url purple://app/settings/open is declared in the app_menu.xml but there are settings available in the app, then a default settings entry is automatically added at the end of the app menu.

The menu icons are located in default/menuicons

The XML file is usually structured as follows:



The file consists of the following elements:

This is the container in which the components of the app menu are stored and it looks like this:

You have the option to place a logo above the entries of the app menu, which will be stored in the app_menu.xml as follows:

You can specify the exact path to the logo file here, as well as the desired height and padding.

A single entry in the menu (using the "Bookmarks" entry as an example) looks like this:

Purple apps offer the option of using custom icons for the menu used in the app.

If you want to use custom icons, you will need them in 3 different versions, so they can be displayed properly on all devices.

Usually the format *.PNG is used because the icons contain transparent areas. The required formats for the icons are:

You want to create your own icon for the menu item Imprint. To ensure that the menu entry looks good on all device types, you need to have the following 3 image files in place:

Purple will choose one of the three image versions, depending on the device.

You can download sample Photoshop documents here:

Each menu entry leads to another URL, either inside your app or to an external source.

Examples are among others:

An overview of possible deep links can be found in the Section Action URLs and Deep linking

For Purple Apps, it is possible, to display the app's main menu in the users' device language. To enable this function, you have to add the title in the app_menu.xml in each language, that you desire to have a translation for and add a country code.

Let's take a look at one of the menu entries of the app menu in the app_menu.xml.

For the Bookmark Add Entry we want to integrate an English and French version (standard is German)

The only thing that is important for a multilingual menu here, is the tag "title". In this segment, another title entry can be added using the country code and the value "locale".

If you would like to offer e.g. an English and French versions now, the following entries are required: 

Your result should look like this

By applying the same principle, you can set up all menu items in multiple languages.