Thread: Issue with asp:Menu and external links

In the new ML 9.0.1.2, I'm trying to add a sitemap node to page.menu.xml.config that will link to an external site as follows:

HTML Code:

<siteMapNode title="Go To Other Site" url="http://www.othersite.com" />

This causes an error in SiteMapProviderFactory.cs: "'http://www.othersite.com' is not a valid virtual path". How can I add an external link to the asp:Menu?

I guess I answered my own question. I found a workaround here:
http://www.joeaudette.com/using-an-e...-provider.aspx

Info: If you add the node (using the AddNode() method), then later change the node.Url to the "http://www.othersite.com", the system won't complain. The reason I am using Guid.NewGuid as the initial page name is because the sitemap provider requires unique URLs (so if you have multiple external links, hard-coding a valid virtual directory is not an option).

Implemented in ASPDNSFSiteMapProvider.cs:


#region BuildSiteMapTree
/// <summary>
/// Core function to build the sitemap tree together with it's hierarchy
/// </summary>
/// <param name="nav">The XPathNavigator object</param>
/// <param name="parent">The parent node</param>
private void BuildSiteMapTree(XPathNavigator nav, SiteMapNode parent)
{
XPathNodeIterator enumerator = nav.Select("siteMapNode");
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
XPathNavigator current = enumerator.Current;

if (IsEntityNode(current))
{
SiteMapNode entityNode = NewSiteMapNode(current);
AddNode(entityNode, parent);
FixExternalLink(ref entityNode, current);
LoadEntity(ExtractType(current), entityNode);
}
else
{
SiteMapNode node = NewSiteMapNode(current);
AddNode(node, parent);
FixExternalLink(ref node, current);

BuildSiteMapTree(current, node);
}
}
}
#endregion

#region NewSiteMapNode
/// <summary>
/// Returns a new instance of SiteMapNode using the title and url attributes
/// </summary>
/// <param name="nav">The XPathNavigator object</param>
/// <returns></returns>
private SiteMapNode NewSiteMapNode(XPathNavigator nav)
{
string title = ExtractTitle(nav);
string url = nav.GetAttribute("url", string.Empty);

SiteMapNode node = new SiteMapNode(this, NewKey(), url, title);

if (url.StartsWith("http"))
{
node.Url = Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".aspx";
}

return node;
}

private void FixExternalLink(ref SiteMapNode node, XPathNavigator nav)
{
string url = nav.GetAttribute("url", string.Empty);
node.Url = url;
}
#endregion

Thanks Tigreye007, I just came across this problem when upgrading a site to 9.1 and this fixed it perfectly. I wonder if your changes could be pushed into the core product to save others the time they'll no doubt spend on it before finding this thread.

Thanks,

- Andy.

This solution works great. I'm not sure why we are taking two steps back with aspnetMenu but this helps. Now if I can just resolve the issue with setting the target for the menu item...