ASP.NET 2.0 Site Navigation Features

31 Comments

• Well, it's very useful.
  

• Scott,
  
  Site Navigation system is a cool feature and i love it but it declaratively handles only the scenario where user roles either can access the page or not. Scenarios in app development like a page can be accessed by all the users but with varying capabilities (some roles has read only and others has update rights as well) with sitemap we may forced to do multiple copies of the page with almost same functionality (i am aware of an alternate implementation that we can give access to all user roles for a node and write logic in every page to check user roles and allow/deny features) . If the sitemap system has a way to indicate which role can have what rights on that node (read-only/ update) ,that would be a great feature.This can be extended to Server controls recognizing this right attribute and get enabled / disabled on the page for the corresponding user role.
  
  
  
  Thanks,
  
  Ajay
  

• Scott,
  
  
  
  I really appreciate these posts! It's like you have a web cam looking over my shoulder, seeing exactly which areas of ASP.NET 2.0 I'm currently struggling with. There's a lot to learn and your blog makes it much easier.
  
  
  
  Jeff
  

• Hi Ajay,
  
  
  
  What I'd typically recommend for those scenarios is to have the node show up in Site Navigation for everyone who has either read or write access, and then actually vary the capabilities within the page itself.
  
  
  
  One new control you can use to declaratively help with doing this is the <asp:loginview> control -- which allows you to declaratively specify role templates to vary content/capabilities. This provides an easy way to restrict/change the capabilities on the page itself.
  
  
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Scott, a not so typical question to this post, but I throw it here.
  
  
  
  <i>This information is cached by ASP.NET, and you can then get access to this sitemap structure at runtime.</i>
  
  
  
  I would like to hear more info about this sentence, or caching mechanism. I read in one technical magazine -MENU article-, where the author adviced that developer has to MANUALY cache the menu, because every hit to menu hits the datasource, e.g. in this case web.sitemap.
  
  
  
  The article was a bit older(I think beta2), but do we still need to create a control wrapping menu control and cache it, or it is a a nonesense in athe article? I can provide a link if you wish, I won't be lazy promise :-)
  

• Hi CowgaR,
  
  
  
  The XML based Site Naivgation system will cache the contents of the XML file in memory (and automatically regenerate the cache anytime the file changes). So you won't need to re-read the file on each request when you have a menu databound to the site navigation system.
  
  
  
  What the article is probably noting, though, is that it might still make sense to output cache the menu contents if it is a big menu -- since re-generating a tree of menu output with hundreds of items can still be pretty expensive. In that case it might make sense to encapsulate the menu control within a user control and perform output caching that way.
  
  
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  Using the TreeView connected to a SiteMap, is it easy to implement PostBack functionality instead of using a URL? I'm using PostBack to prevent losing new entered data in a FormView.
  

• Is there a quick way to get rid of that annoying arrow that separates the menus?
  

• Hi mb,
  
  
  
  If by annoying arrow you mean the ">>" in my sample above <g>, then the answer is definitely yes. If you look at my code sample you'll see why this is showing up:
  
  
  
  Label label = new Label();
  
  label.Text = " >> ";
  
  SiteHierarchy.Controls.AddAt(0, label);
  
  
  
  You can change this to be whatever you want instead.
  
  
  
  Thanks,
  
  
  
  Scott
  

• Scott,
  
  
  
  Do you know if you can change the default sitemapprovider through code?
  
  
  
  Also, can you set parameters of a provider through code?
  
  
  
  Here is an example:
  
  
  
  I want all navigation controls set to use the default provider; I don't want them set specifically to any one provider.
  
  
  
  Then, I want to be able to change the default provider through code rather than the web.config.
  
  
  
  I may even want to add a provider through code, and then set properties for that provider.
  
  
  
  Is this possible?
  
  
  
  Thanks,
  
  Roger
  

• Thanx man .
  
  I want ask can i have 2 siteMap in one project?
  
  

• Hi nasser,
  
  Yep -- you can have multiple sitemaps in a single project. You simple indicate in the parent sitemap where the child sitemaps are to implement the hierarchy.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Some thought.
  I can add role specification in the sitemapNode, but that seems tyo beuseless, cause I STILL need to config the access by web.config.
  
  I thought by specify a role in the sitemap it should render regaring to the usersroles, not hte settings in sitemap. otherwise, you get the sameeffect without anything in the sitemapNode.
  
  Do you understand my point?
  

• Hi Pelle,
  
  All you should need to-do is to restrict role access in the authorization section for your urls, and then enable securitytrimming. You then don't need to set the roles in the web.sitemap file.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Pelle,
  
  We've actually shipped the source code for the XML SiteMap provider here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/downloads/providers/default.aspx
  
  This will allow you to dynamically load the sitemap however you want.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• In my tests, i am not getting the full URL when I attach a sitemap via teh DataSource property.
  
  I do not get the "http://" portion and the postbacks do nothing.
  
  Seen this?
  

• Hi Mike,
  
  Can you provide more details about the exact scenario you are doing?
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• hi,
  i would like to ask abou localization, if i want to store my localized texts in the DB, how can i config the sitemap to retrive it at runtime? if i don't want to use the resource files.
  
  Another question is can i at real-time add new set of child nodes when user clicks at the current leaf node, by mean of using another custom provider? Then i have to specifiy sitemapnode that points to this provider for every leaf node? That's an adhoc task to do.
  
  What i want exactly is to have static sitemap files and when it reaches the leaf node, it should retrive child nodes from DB at real-time (such as you have category as leaf node and then retrieve all products at run-time), how can i do that??
  
  Thanks
  

• Scott,
  How can we add dynamic navigation to the sitemap/breadcrumb using the SiteMap Control?
  Maybe with an example I can explain...
  
  I have a site with the following structure:
  
  Category > MovieTitles > SoundTracksTitles > SoundTrackDetailInfo
  
  All of the information to generate the path above is stored in DB tables. How can we use the SiteMap control but still generate the breadcrumb path above?
  
  Thanks,
  Mukesh
  

• Hi Mukesh,
  
  Danny Chen has a great blog on Site Navigation features, and has some articles on it about dynamically modifying the sitemap layout that should help: http://weblogs.asp.net/dannychen/
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Matt,
  
  This article describes how to use a database to store localization resources: http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/localization.asp
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Chris,
  
  Have you tested things using the approach I outlined here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/pages/Recipe_3A00_-Implementing-Role_2D00_Based-Security-with-ASP.NET-2.0-using-Windows-Authentication-and-SQL-Server.aspx
  
  This post shows how to use Windows Auth w/ Roles and control what nodes show up in a SiteMap.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi scott great article. 1 question though. rather than hide nodes based on roles is there a way of changing the style of the rendered node i.e the color?
  
  im presuming you can overide the render of the control, but am not sure how to implement this.
  
  

• Hi,
  I have a question with respect to the security implementation of treeview using sitemap. Normally in the sitemap we can implement role based security but that is based on the Role based functionality provided by ASP.NET.
  Actually in our site we are using custom roles with our own role management and stuff. So is there a way to hide or show certain elements of the Sitemap in my menu based on the custom roles without using asp.net roles.
  Thanking you in advance.
  Khurram
  

• the example is always showing the menu starting from level 1 with only one root, is there any way I can have more than one root in the first level? like the usual menu in windows explorer, ie File, Edit, View in the first level
  

• Can we make this site navigation control like the one below:
  
  HOME | MAINMENU1 | MAINMENU2
  SUBMENU1-1 | SUBMENU1-2 | SUBMENU1-3
  

• when i try to create a site map with more than one node at the top level, i encounter problems. it i possible only to have one root node?
  

• Hi Freedom,
  
  What you can do is to leave the root node within your sitemap blank, and then have multiple nodes underneath it.
  
  Within the SiteMapDataSource control you can then set the ShowStartingNode property to false to omit the root node. When you do this you'll then have multiple top-level navigation links.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• It does not work in case of response.redirect for a new page that is not in sitemapnode.
  Any solution?
  

• I can dig it, but I have a question. You have to have your mouse positioned directlly over the "text" in the menu in order to navigate. I'm using CSS to pretty it up a bit and would like to be able to click anywhere in "table cell"...similar to click archive links on the left hand side of this page.
  
  Can this be done?
  

• I've been doing some ASP.NET-work, and Opera is full of tabs now: "ScottGu's Blog : ...". Just confirms "Hope this helps", Scott, it does!