Disable Menu item from <ul><li> list?

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I'm certain this has been asked, and I apologize for the repeat if it has - I can't find the answer despite having looked and searched every way I can think of.

I'm building a menu on the server-side from information in a database. I'd like to be able to selectively disable (or, possibly, merely hide) menu items based on the logged-in user's permission level. I can add any attribute to any part of the HTML code from which the menu is built but don't know which attribute to add to which portion of the <ul><li> list.

I could build the necessary javascript on the server to be run on the client but that seems needlessly complex.

Is there an attribute I can use to disable a menu item as I've described?

TIA

Deken

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