Get structured list of albums to generate menu?

Here's one I don't think I've seen discussed.

Can I easily:
* Fetch a list of available albums
* Showing only those viewable by me (based on session / userid)
* In a hierarchical structure

I want to take that list and use the first two levels to add items to my default navigation menu. That way, I can have "Gallery -> Travel" or "Gallery -> Travel -> England" in my site menu, just to make it easier to go straight to certain albums and such.

I know I could simply grab the sidebar and parse the "jump to album" block, but that 1) requires that block be displayed, 2) in *just* such a format, and 3) isn't easily parsed in a structured manner.

The alternative is simply that I manually create a menu structure within my CMS, but then every time I add a new album in Gallery I'll have to manually add that in the site menu, and I'd like it to be "magic."

Thanks!

I might...I might. I do admit freely that I'm not as familar with G2 (or even just plain G) as most, but I haven't been able to wade through much of the documentation on embedding and I didn't see anything from a quick search or two of the forums.

On the other hand, if by "album select module block" you mean the bit in the sidebar that shows either a tree or a pop-up list of albums, then, no. I mean, yes, I want the data that builds those blocks, but I don't want to be parsing those blocks per se.

After I posted my initial request, I toyed a little more and came up with a refinement: A simple list of album paths is all I really need. (at least, all I think I need, right now, in my less-than-alert state) (I'm a little distracted by a baby at the moment ).

I need a list of album names, something like this:

Travel
Travel/England
Travel/Boston
Home
Home/Improvements
Home/Holidays
....

I can then parse through that list, separating on /, to get the data I need. Coincidentally, the way that I need to add items to the menu is all / based, too -- when I add "Travel/Boston" it automagically makes it a subitem of a menu "Travel." So I just add each string as a menu item, and I use the last component as the menu's title.

Or, better yet, if I start with an array of (path,name) pairs, I can add Album Names instead of paths to the menu.

Ultimately, I want this as part of the main, integrated site menu, not as a sidebar item.

So what's this album select block? Something I can easily call from the menu generation routine in the embedding module? Or is it just some kind of sidebar block?

I'm trying to get the gallery more seamlessly integrated into my site. I want the albums to be selected directly from the main site menu, not from a submenu in a sidebar. The idea being that the end user shouldn't know where pages end and the galleries begin.

I've currently got something rough set up here: http://www.dasnet.org/gallery (note that the menus aren't currently remaining highlighted the way they should, and they're acting strangely on Mac Firefox). (and I really don't have anything out there yet as I'm just getting started....)

In the long run, this may not even be a viable approach for me, but it might be for others, especially people who try to have a larger, all-encompassing site menu on the left.

So, I'm guessing that there isn't an easy way to do this, then?

Ah! Okay, I'm sorry then. I thought you were talking about just using the album select block as, well, a block. but if there's a way to manually call it w/out having it appear, then that might well get me everything I need.

thanks, I'll do some exploring on this...