Question

I am trying to create a menu that sorts differently depending on what the user role is.

For example, if the user is an Admin role, the menu shown will be:

• AdminPane

• RegisterUser

• UserRoles

and if the user is Basic role:

• ViewProducts

• makeOrder

This is a layout example.

I would appreciate some help as I’ve been searching the net for 2 hours with no luck.

Thanks.

Answer 1

What you want to do is in your web.config have a section in your system.web section, like so:

    <siteMap>
        <providers>
            <add name="anonymous" type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="~/YourAnonymouse.sitemap"/>
            <add name="user" type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="~/YourNormalUser.sitemap"/>
            <add name="admin" type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="~/YourAdmin.sitemap"/>
        </providers>
    </siteMap>

Then with this, you’ll have three site map providers defined, each pointing to their respective sitemap files for the necessary menu you are looking for for each user type.

Then you’ll have a SiteMapDataSource that your menu server control will use. This will most likely exist on your master page. On your Page_Load() of your master page you’ll have logic to dynamically and programmatically set the sitemap data source of your SiteMapDataSource control:

    if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
    {
        if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("Admin"))
            SiteMapDataSource1.Provider = SiteMap.Providers("admin");
        else
            SiteMapDataSource1.Provider = SiteMap.Providers("user");
    }
    else
        SiteMapDataSource1.Provider = SiteMap.Providers("anonymous");