Drupal 7 changing links of the fly in a Drupal Menu

This is a bit of hack but I thought I’d get it documented here anyway. Please for feel free to message me with better solutions for sorting this issue.

The reason you can’t do this with hook_menu_alter is that this method does not create the menu on the fly; as the menu is built and stored in cache.

Here in my code I’ve got a calculation that returns a NID that I want to replace with the default one that I have in the menu item.

So I’ve added this to the body class list and retrieve it in the Javascript.

/*
 * Implements hook_preprocess_html()

 */

function MODULE_preprocess_html(&$variables){

  global $user;

  drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('module', 'MODULE') . '/js/MODULE.menu.overrides.js');

// the method here calculates what Nid I need to direct what user too. 
    $getNid = SupplierFormHelpers::getNid($user->uid);

    $variables['classes_array'][] = 'ROLE-logged-in';
    $variables['classes_array'][] = $getNid;

  }

}

and here's the Javascript file

/**
 * @file
 * Javascript to replace NID with the one for the current User
 */
(function ($) {

    /**
     * Process controls.
     */
    Drupal.behaviors.moduleMenuOverrides = {

        attach: function (context) {

            // first of all lets place the number somewhere ( body class !! ) and retrieve that .

            if ($("body").hasClass("ROLE-logged-in")){

                var pageNid = 1;

               /* get the body class array and retrieve the next number along */
                var classList = $("body").attr('class').split(/\s+/);

                for (var i = 0; i < classList.length; i++) {
                    if (classList[i] === 'ROLE-logged-in') {
                        var i2 = i + 1;
                        pageNid = classList[i2];
                    }
                }

                /* i now have the number I want to replace with - so let's do a swap */
                
                var editLink = '/node/' + pageNid + '/edit';
                var navigation = $("#block-system-navigation");
                $("#block-system-navigation").each(function(){
                    var html = $(this).html();
                    html = html.replace("/node/1/edit", roleLink);
                    $(this).html(html);

                })

            }

        }
    }

})(jQuery);