| A Multipart Series on ASP.NET 2.0's Site Navigation |
|---|
This article is one in a series of articles on ASP.NET 2.0's site navigation functionality.
Part 1 - shows how to create a simple site map
using the default XML-based site map provider and how to display a
TreeView and SiteMapPath (breadcrumb) based on the site map data.Part 2 - explores programmatically accessing
site map data through the SiteMap class;
includes a thorough discussion of the SiteMapPath (breadcrumb) control.Part 3 - examines how to use base the site map's
contents on the currently logged in user and the authorization rules
defined for the pages in the site map.Part 4 - delves into creating a custom site
map provider, specifically one that bases the site map on the website's physical, file system structure.Part 5 - see how to customize the markup
displayed by the navigation controls, and how to create your own custom navigation UI.
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The site navigation features in ASP.NET 2.0 make it easy to define
a site map and implement common navigation UI elements, such as a breadcrumb, treeview, and menu. Due to its use of
the provide model, you can dictate how to serialize
the site map. ASP.NET 2.0 ships with a default implementation that serializes site map information to an XML-formatted file
(Web.sitemap, by default), but as we saw in Part 4
this logic can be customized to garner site map information directly from the file system or through
a SQL Server database table. Site navigation can even be configured
to use security trimming, which will remove those nodes in the site map for which the currently logged on user does not
have authorization to view.
The site map provider model and security trimming features are used to customize the set of site map nodes used by the navigation
Web controls, and afford a great deal of customization. However, there are times where we may want to customize the rendered
output of the navigation control based on the site map data. For example, maybe in our Menu control we want to
display an icon next to each menu item depending on some classification defined for the menu item's corresponding site map
node. Alternatively, the markup rendered by ASP.NET's built-in navigation controls may not suit our needs. Rather than
displaying a TreeView or Menu, we may want to show the site navigation information in a bulleted list. Such functionality is
possible by directly working with the SiteMap
class.
In this article we'll look at how to accomplish a hodgepodge of customizations when rendering the navigation UI controls.
Read on to learn more!
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