This is a fork from cloudscribe.Web.Navigation.

I've made the following changes to smooth the upgrading work from ASP.net 4.x to ASP.net Core for my projects using MvcSiteMapProvider.

Background

We were using MvcSiteMapProvider for navigation(menus/breadcrumbs) in our .net 4.x project heavily. When planning to move to .net Core, we found it was missing .net Core support yet.

From this discussion, we learnt the cloudscribe.Web.Navigation project.

In our project, we used the configuration-by-code feature a lot. However cloudscribe.Web.Navigation did not support this feature. So this is the first reason for we made this fork.

1. [NavNodeAttribute]

This attribute is just like the [MvcSiteMapNodeAttribute], which makes it convenient to keep the node information in the same place as your controller action.

[NavNode(Key = "ViewPage", ParentKey = "ProductIndexPage", Text = "View page")]
public IActionResult View()
{
    return View();
}

Comparing with navigation.xml/json,

• the field information of controller/action/area of the node will be collected by reflection automatically;
• other field information can be set via this attribute by code;
• Key is optional if it has no children node (see #2);
• ParentKey points to its parent node and will be used to build the navigation tree. If empty, it refers to the RootNode;
• Don't set duplicated keys and the RootNode should be only one.
• You may set Order to adjust the order of the nodes (see #3).

2. Key auto-generated

The name of keys are insignificant for most nodes. So we change it optional and generate a random key automatically if you don't set one.

This is not for [NavNode] only. It also works for the navigation.xml or navigation.json.

3. Node order

We add Order property to NavigationNode. You may adjust the display order of the nodes.

Considering compatibilty, this feature is NOT enabled by default. (see #4)

4. Configuration

In appsettings.json, you may configure like below:

{
    "NavigationOptions": {
        "RootTreeBuilderName": "cloudscribe.Web.Navigation.ReflectionNavigationTreeBuilder",
        "IncludeAssembliesForScan": "NavigationDemo.Web",
        "EnableSorting": true
    }
}

You should put the assembly names into IncludeAssembliesForScan (comma-separated if two or more), and you should set EnableSorting to true.

The RootNode of the navigation tree should be marked like below:

[NavNode(Key = "HomePage", ParentKey = "", Text = "Home page")]
public IActionResult Index()
{
    return View();
}

5. Mixing configuration

You can also use both navigation.xml and [NavNode] (or both navigation.json and [NavNode]). For example in appsettings.json,

{
    "NavigationOptions": {
        "RootTreeBuilderName": "cloudscribe.Web.Navigation.XmlNavigationTreeBuilder",
        "NavigationMapXmlFileName": "navigation.xml",
        "IncludeAssembliesForScan": "NavigationDemo.Web",
        "EnableSorting": true
    }
}

It will load the navigation.xml configuration first, and then load the [NavNode] configuration. Of course, in this situation, the RootNode should be set in the navigation.xml.

6. Processing '$resources:....'

MvcSiteMapProvider supports an old localization feature, which inherited from ASP.net Site Navigation. You may use text in format: $resources:ClassName,KeyName,DefaultValue for Title or Text of the node.

7. Converting from 'Mvc.sitemap'

We also made a small console tool for converting from 'Mvc.sitemap' to navigation.xml.

8. KeyPrefix

We use some inherited controllers, and made this prefix feature. For example,

public class ProductController : Controller
{
	[NavNode(Key = "{Prefix}ProductList", Text = "List of Products")]
	public IActionResult List() {}
	[NavNode(ParentKey = "{Prefix}ProductList", Text = "Product details", PreservedRouteParameters = "id")]
	public IActionResult View(int id) {}
}
[Area("Staff")]
[NavNodeController(KeyPrefix = "Staff")]
public class StaffProductController : ProductController
{
}

• For ProductController, List node will has key: ProductList (prefix is empty now); View node will has parentKey ProductList, pointing to List action of the same controller;
• StaffProductController inherits from ProductController. List node will has key StaffProductList (prefix is Staff now); View node will has parentKey StaffProductList, pointing to List action of the same controller.

I'll pull this work to cloudscribe.Web.Navigation later. If accepted and merged, this fork will stop maintainance.