Question

I have two user controls (ascx); one contains some forms, and the other one contains the menu bar.

I used both of them in many pages. Now, I need to customize the one that has the menu bar for the Admin Homepage. So, is it possible to add some changes to the user control just for this page.

I mean by changes, adding two elements to the menu bar.

For instance, let us assume that the two pages are called: Admin, Settings. How will you customize the user control for them?

My code for the Menu User Control (ascx file):

<div class="topnav">
            <ul class="menu" runat="server" >
                <li><a href="Default.aspx">Home</a></li>
                <li><a href="#">Sub-Menu1</a>
                    <ul>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                    </ul>
                </li>
                <li><a href="#x">Sub-Menu2</a>
                    <ul>        
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item </a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                        <li><a href="#">Item</a></li>
                    </ul>
                </li>
                <li><a href="#">ITEM</a></li>
                <li><a href="About.aspx">About</a></li>
                <li><a href="Contact.aspx">Contact Us</a></li>
                <li><a href="#">Help</a></li>
                <li class="menuItem1ToHide"><a href="#">Admin</a></li>
            </ul>
            <div class="clr"></div>
          </div>

And inside the Master Page, I put:

<uc1:MenuBar ID="MenuBar1" runat="server" />

As you see from above code, I added the Admin page as the last element in the list, and the code-behind class, I added the bool method mentioned below, but I don’t know how to make the last element only visible for the Admin rather than the other users

By the way, I am using the ASP.NET Role-Based Security since I am using the Windows Authentication. This to define the Admin from the Normal User.

Answer 1

Sure,

Add the two items to the menu bar, and hide them for everything but the admin page. You can do that in several ways; check the URL of the current request, or add a property to the user control (default the menu items to false).

public bool DisplayAdminOnlyMenuItems
{
  get { return menuItem1ToHide.Visible; }
  set
  {
     menuItem1ToHide.Visible = value;
     menuItem2ToHide.Visible = value;
  }
}

or you can use a method to do it. The property allows you to set it in markup or code. For instance, if your UC definition was this:

<uc:Menu ID="ucMenu" runat="server" />

You can set it, for the admin page, this way:

<uc:Menu ID="ucMenu" runat="server" DisplayAdminOnlyMenuItems="True" />

And then it will make those menu items visible.

EDIT: In your case, since everything is role security, add runat=”server” to the LI to show or hide:

<li id="liAdmin" runat="server" class="menuItem1ToHide"><a href="#">Admin</a></li>

In your code, on prerender of the user control, do:

protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
{
    liAdmin.Visible = this.User.IsInRole("Admin");
    //if visible isn't available, use style["display"] = (this.User.IsInRole("Admin") ? "" : "none";
}

Something like that.