ASP.NET Menu using Sitemap and MasterPage

• Download ASPNet_Menu_Using_SiteMap.zip - 5.8 KB

Introduction

Asp.Net menu control displays menu statically or dynamically using Sitemap Data Source control, which using site map control in ASP.Net. Here I am going to explain how to display menu using sitemap control.

A site map is made up of a series of related SiteMapNode objects. The SiteMapNodes are related in such a way as to form a hierarchy. The hierarchy contains a single root node, which is the sole node in the hierarchy that does not have a parent node. Each node in the hierarchy represents a logical section of the website. Each section can have a title, URL, description, and so on, which are modeled by the SiteMapNodes class's properties (Title, Url, Description, and so on).

Creating Sitemap file

From Visual Studio 2005 we can easily create the sitemap file by right clicking the website in the solution explorer, choosing Add NewItem, and then selecting the Site Map icon. The created file has a few XML elements.

The element can have a number of attributes. Here is some attributes which are mostly using,

- title (Specifies the title of the section).

- url (Specify the url of section. It must have unique).

- description (Specify the description of the section. Used in alt attribute).

Creating Master Page.

Create a master page in our website by right clicking the website in the solution explorer, choosing Add NewItem, and then selecting MasterPage icon. I'm going to link some aspx pages through our menu. So now we have to create some .aspx pages as a content page of masterpage. We can create aspx pages by right clicking the masterpage and choose the add content page, then rename it. Here we are going to create four pages namely Main.aspx, Menu1.aspx, Menu2.aspx and SubMenu1.aspx.

Using the code

After completing this process go to master page and copy the following code

<asp:Menu ID="Menu1" runat="server" DataSourceID="SiteMapDataSource1">
</asp:Menu>

<asp:SiteMapDataSource ID="SiteMapDataSource1" runat="server" />

<asp:contentplaceholder id="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server">
  </asp:contentplaceholder>

From the above, SiteMapDataSource is set to asp:Menu datasource. Then copy the following code in to sitemap file.

<sitemapnode title="Main Page" description="Main Page" url="Main.aspx" />
  <sitemapnode title="Menu one" description="Menu one" url="Menu1.aspx" />
  <sitemapnode title="Menu Two" description="Menu Two" url="Menu2.aspx" />
  <sitemapnode title="SubMenu One" description="SubMenu One" url="SubMenu1.aspx" />
  </sitemapnode />
</sitemapnode />

Now run the project …

That's it…