Implement Navigation as Inherited Component

Hi,

My recommendation is to think about 3 aspects:

* How would you manage and design any single navigation? Should it require a developer to craft it? Or do you require it to be defined by an author using some kind of UI?

* Next is the mapping of the "role" to a specific navigation? Where is this maintained? Defined by a user/super-user? Admin? AEM developer?

* And finally the easiest question: How do you want to include this navigation into the page?

I would start with the details of the requirements and try to answer the first question first. One thing you could use is a Content Fragment or Experience Fragment to model to model the navigation. There is already an editor, tooling etc available for it.

For the mapping of role to navigation you probably need some type of dialog (multi-value), which allows you select a group name in a drop down and which allows to specify a navigation you created before.

When you have done that, you need to think about how it can be easily integrated into the page rendering process. I would opt to design specific a specific MainNavigation class, which encapsulates the CF/XF and is able to map that CF/XF into a navigation. The selection of the correct navigation based on inheritance is something I would hide within a adapter pattern, so you could use something like:

page.adaptTo(MainNavigation.class).firstLevel().foreach(...)

Focus first on the design, on the content structure and all the requirements. Coding is then the easiest part.