Sitemap without Role Managements

[avantgd]

I am relatively new to ASP.Net 2.0 and am working on an application for our company similar to ASP.Net Time Tracker 2.0. I want to use a similar web.sitemap but my web host does not allow role management to be enabled on our shared server. How do I create a similary sitemap, i.e. menu items are only displayed for certain user groups, without using role management. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[jmeckley]

you could create a custom SiteMapProvider and handle the role management yourself. I use a custom SiteMapProvider to "hide" accessible links. example:
web.config

<system.web>
   <siteMap defaultProvider="VisibleProvider" enabled="true">
      <providers>
         <clear/>
         <add name="VisibleProvider" description="Custom SiteMap Provider" type="SBI.SiteMapProvider.CustomSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="Web.sitemap" securityTrimmingEnabled="true"/>
      </providers>
   </siteMap>
</system.web>

App_Code/MySiteMapProvider.cs

using System.Web;
namespace SBI.SiteMapProvider
{
   public class CustomSiteMapProvider : XmlSiteMapProvider
   {
      public override SiteMapNodeCollection GetChildNodes(SiteMapNode node)
      {
         SiteMapNodeCollection nodes = base.GetChildNodes(node);
         SiteMapNodeCollection returnNodes = new SiteMapNodeCollection(nodes);

         foreach (SiteMapNode n in nodes)
         {
            if (n["visible"] != null && n["visible"].Equals("false")) returnNodes.Remove(n);
         }
         return SiteMapNodeCollection.ReadOnly(returnNodes);
      }
   }
}

then use SiteMapDataSource or SiteMapPath object as you normally would.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

 

[avantgd]

Thank you for the help and the sample code. I think I understand how it works. However, how do you handle setting the sitemap node to false in the web.sitemap?

 

[jbenson001]

You can't.. You have to use the code Jason gave you.

 

[jmeckley]

does you mean how is the web.sitemap file formatted? like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<siteMap xmlns="[URL unfurl="true"]http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0"[/URL] >
  <siteMapNode url="Home.aspx" title="Home" visisble="true">
    <siteMapNode url="Work.aspx" title="Work" visisble="false" />
    <siteMapNode url="School.aspx" title="School" visisble="false" />
  </siteMapNode>
</siteMap>

also a quick google search for web.sitemap or custom web.sitemap turns has some great resources

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.