my own helper creating menu

[eluser]Krystian[/eluser]
yeah, of course I can create model ( recursive ), but look on my old function again

Code:

function display_children($parent, $level, $dbh) {
    
    $sql = "SELECT a.id id, a.label label, a.link link, Deriv1.Count Count FROM `menu` a  LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT parent, COUNT(*) AS Count FROM `menu` GROUP BY parent) Deriv1 ON a.id = Deriv1.parent WHERE a.parent=" . $parent;

    echo "<ul id='nav'>";
    
    foreach($dbh->query( $sql ) as $row)
    {

        if ($row['Count'] > 0)
        {

            echo "<li><a href='" . $row['>" . $row['label'] . "</a>";

            display_children($row['id'], $level + 1, $dbh);

            echo "</li>";

        } elseif ($row['Count'] == 0) {

            echo "<li><a href='" . $row['>" . $row['label'] . "</a></li>";
            //echo "<li class='level".$level."'><a class='level".$level."' href='" . $row['>" . $row['label'] . "</a></li>";

        } else;
    }
    
    echo "</ul>";

}

This ( with CSS help ) create fine dropdown menu.
How can I use it in model? I don`t want to have HTML tags there.