Java multilevel menu structure

I'm building a web application in Java (Tapestry 5). I want to create a multilevel menu where I can show the root elements for example at the top of my page and the children of the selected on the left.

To implement this I was thinking to use a tree structure like this:

public class SiteMap {

private List<MenuItem> root;

public class MenuItem {

    private String 开发者_Python百科pageFileName;
    private String pageNavigationName;

    private List<MenuItem> children;
    private MenuItem parent;

    public MenuItem(String pageFileName, String pageNavigationName, MenuItem parent) {
        this.pageFileName = pageFileName;
        this.pageNavigationName = pageNavigationName;
        this.parent = parent;
    }

    public String getPageFileName() {
        return pageFileName;
    }

    public String getPageNavigationName() {
        return pageNavigationName;
    }

    public List<MenuItem> getChildren() {
        return children;
    }

    public MenuItem getParent() {
        return this.parent;
    }
}
}

Now what if I want to build a menu based on the children of 1 parent item (only have the pageFileName - String) somewhere in the tree. Ill have to traverse recursively through the tree to find this parent item based on the pageFileName (String) , which seems not a good way.

Is this (using a tree structure) the right way to implement this? Or is there a better option? Any thoughts and hints are appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Nathan

---

MenuItem root = null;
MenuItem curr = myMenuItem;
while(curr.getParent() != null) {
    curr = curr.getParent(); 
}
root = curr;

There's nothing wrong with doing it that way, that code will run very fast, especailly since you aren't going to have millions of menu entries.

---

Why not use MenuItem for both parent and children and keep a reference from each child to its parent?

List<MenuItem> children; // empty/null for leaf nodes
MenuItem parent; // null for root nodes