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Is it possible to force the sitemap control to render the menu when the current action is not listed in the MVC.sitemap file?

I have a simple top nav. When the current action is in the sitemap, the call to .Menu() will render the correct <ul><li>.. data. However, if I got to a page that is not in the sitemap such as /Home/Login, then it will not render any html at all (not even a comment, just empty space). This isn't an [authorize] issue; the menu is fine when i'm in '/Home/Index'.

It seems like it should render what was requested, but just not set the IsCurrentNode and IsNodeInPath properties. Here is the call I am making 

<div id="main-nav">
    @Html.MvcSiteMap().Menu(0, true, true, 1)
</div>

The Mvc.sitemap file:

<mvcSiteMapNode title="Home" controller="Home" action="Index">
    <mvcSiteMapNode title="Form New Human" controller="Person" action="Create"/>
    <!-- there is no mvcSiteMapNode for "Home" "Login" -->
</mvcSiteMapNode>
Andrew
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1 Answers1

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Found the way around it. It apparently isn't a built in extension method, or at least I couldn't find one. You could call Html.MvcSitemap().Menu(Html.MvcSiteMap.Provider.RootNode,...) but I didn't want to instantiate the helper twice.

<div id="main-nav">
@{
    var sm = Html.MvcSiteMap();
    @sm.Menu(sm.Provider.RootNode, true, true, 2);  // 2 levels (home, plus main nav)
}
</div>

Looking around in the disassembly seems to show that it works a little like this:

  • You really need a starting node
  • If you don't give it one, it tries to find one based on the current node
    • plus restrictions (forward searching, depth restrictions, etc)
    • if you want nodes from level 1, you have to know what level you are on
  • Since that returns null, starting node is null, which means the helper writes an empty string

There may be a combination of tricks, or an overload or two, which can be finagled into doing this, but I can't find it right now. This works for my needs (simple top menu). There has to be a simpler way to do this, something with wild cards, or route based, with a closest match thing going on. I figured menus were a fairly standard part of a web app, and this would be covered :)

Andrew
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