Question

Im using the MVC Contrib project to generate my menu system for an MVC site.

How does one generate attributes in your <a href tag based on your SiteMap. Ive managed to achieve this by specifying the attributesToIgnore="target" in my provider definition in my web.config and adding the attribute to my mvcSiteMapNode element in my sitemap file.

<mvcSiteMapNode title="Hello World"
                    controller="Home"
                    action="Index"
                    changeFrequency="Always"
                    updatePriority="Normal"
                    target="_blank">
</mvcSiteMapNode>

I then iterate through my SiteMap file pick of the attribute using

siteMapNode["target"]

and render it myself as <a href="#" target="_blank" > </a>. Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Have you tried creating a SiteMapNodeModel display template? That allows you to construct your anchor tag however you wish. I created one to specifically add a class to the anchor if the node was in the current path so that I could apply specific CSS.

Here is the razor partial view I use:

@model MvcSiteMapProvider.Web.Html.Models.SiteMapNodeModel
@{   
    if (Model.IsCurrentNode && Model.SourceMetadata["HtmlHelper"].ToString() !="MvcSiteMapProvider.Web.Html.MenuHelper")
{
        @Model.Title    
    }
    else if (Model.IsClickable)
    {
        <a href="@Model.Url" class="@(Model.IsInCurrentPath ? "current" : string.Empty)" target="@Model.TargetFrame" >@Model.Title</a>
    }
    else
    {
    @Model.Title
    }

}

The file, named “SiteMapNodeModel.cshtml” (razor) goes in Shared/DisplayTemplates. When asp.net Mvc rendors a SiteMapNodelModel it will automatically use this template.