ASP.NET 2.0 site map builds website navigation structure

Figure 1: Website structure

Figure 2: Adding a new sitemap

Figure 3: Breadcrumb navigation

Figure 4: Sample run of Default.aspx

Figure 5: Default page of the Products folder

Figure 6. Default page of Services folder

Figure 7: Sample run of Product1.aspx

Notice how the title and URL attributes of the web.sitemap file are used to generate "breadcrumbs". Also, notice how the parent is displayed along with the current page title. Try navigating to various pages and observing the SiteMapPath control.

4. Use SiteMap data source control

The use of site maps is not limited to the SiteMapPath control. You can also attach a sitemap to a navigable control (such as a TreeView). In the following example, you will use the same site map file to implement binding to a TreeView control.

Add a new Web form SiteMapDataSourceDemo.aspx to the website. Then, drag a SiteMap data source control (SiteMapDataSource1) and a TreeView control (TreeView1) onto the form. Set the DataSourceID property of this TreeView control to SiteMapDataSource1. In addition, set the ShowLines property of the TreeView control to true. Here is the complete markup from the SiteMapDataSourceDemo.aspx page:

Now, run the Web form to see how the same navigation structure is automatically generated into the TreeView (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Binding the sitemap file to a TreeView control

Here, you first get the total number of child nodes in the root node. Then, you loop through the ChildNodes collection of the root node. On each iteration, you create a new instance of the TreeNode class and specify its title and url in its constructor. Then, you add this TreeNode to the TreeView's Nodes collection. Then, you check if the current SiteMapNode has any child nodes. If there is, you traverse it and repeat the TreeNode creation process. Note that this time you add the new TreeNodes to the current TreeNode object's ChildNodes collection.

Note that you use 2 in the loop because you know there are only two levels of nesting. To make your logic more general, you can use recursion to populate the TreeView.

Run the web form and you'll see something similar to Figure 8 again.

6. Use safety maintenance

Often, websites implement a role-based security model. For example, you can have different roles in your application such as system administrator, product tester, and service tester. In situations like this, you often need to control the site navigation links that are displayed to users. For example, if the currently logged in user has the product tester role, you might want to display only links related to the product and hide any other links. One way to handle roles is to use hand coding, however, it requires implementing all authorization logic programmatically. Fortunately, sitemap files and the SiteMap data source control together provide a feature called security trimming to help you.

In order to test the security overhaul, you need to enable your site's membership and role features. Open the web.config file and add the following tags:

Figure 9: Adding roles using Web site management tools

Figure 10: Creating users using web site management tools

Figure 11: Login page

Figure 12: Use safety refurbishment