There is a label that could be used as the display name, a
large text box for description that could be used for the URL and built in
custom sorting and if needed could support multiple languages in the future. Once I determined that, it was just a matter
of some custom code and POC testing.
I started by setting up a Group, Term Set and the nested Terms
that would make up my navigation.
Assigning each Term a “Default Label”, populating the “Description” if I
want it to be a link or leaving it blank if it was just a container and
unchecking “Available for Tagging” for Terms but keeping it checked for the
Term Set (more on that later):
Next enter Visual Studio:
The Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy namespace / assembly has the
classes we need to pull our Managed Metadata and is fairly easy to use. We start by getting the Terms we are looking
for from the service:
TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(SPContext.Current.Site);
var
termStore = session.DefaultSiteCollectionTermStore;
var tsc = termStore.GetTermSets("GlobalNavigation", 1033);
if (tsc.Count > 0)
{
var
tsGlobal = tsc[0];
var tc =
tsGlobal.GetAllTerms();
var items =
_buildMenu(tc, Guid.Empty,
tsGlobal.CustomSortOrder == null ? new List<string>()
: tsGlobal.CustomSortOrder.Split(':').ToList<string>());
_renderMenu(items);
}
Notice I did have to hardcode the name of my Term Set “GlobalNavigation”
but everything else is pretty generic. I
am assuming 1 Term Set in the entire service named GlobalNavigation but you
could also narrow by the Group first to make sure. Also notice the strange parameter call to my
_buildMenu function. When custom sorting
is used the items are not returned sorted and there is not a property on a Term
with its sort order, but instead the parent container (TermSet in this case)
has a property called CustomSortOrder that is a string of guids separated by
semicolons. Therefore I split the string
into a list correctly sorted for use in the function.
To build the structure of my navigation I created a private
class to maintain the information:
private class _menu
{
public Term item {get; set;}
public List<_menu> children { get;
set; }
public int order {get; set;}
public _menu(Term
i)
{
item = i;
order = 0;
}
}
Then it was just a matter of parsing the terms and putting
them in the right order:
private List<_menu> _buildMenu(TermCollection
terms, Guid parent, List<string> sortOrder)
{
var ret = new List<_menu>();
IEnumerable<Term>
childTerms = null;
if (parent != Guid.Empty)
{
childTerms = from k in terms
where
k.Parent != null && k.Parent.Id ==
parent && !k.IsDeprecated
orderby
k.CustomSortOrder
select
k;
}
else
{
childTerms = from k in terms
where
k.Parent == null && !k.IsDeprecated
orderby
k.CustomSortOrder
select
k;
}
foreach (Term
child in childTerms)
{
var newItem = new
_menu(child);
if (sortOrder != null && sortOrder.Count > 0)
newItem.order = sortOrder.IndexOf(child.Id.ToString());
//Find this items sub terms - Recursion Rocks!
newItem.children = _buildMenu(terms, child.Id,
newItem.item.CustomSortOrder == null ? new List<string>() : newItem.item.CustomSortOrder.Split(':').ToList<string>());
ret.Add(newItem);
}
return (from r in ret
orderby r.order, r.item.Name
select r).ToList<_menu>();
}
Once you get the List of _menu items you just have to use
your favorite menu rendering technique, apply a little CSS, add your new
control to your master page solution (or hack with SPD) and you have a menu
based on your Term Set:
Advantages:
- “Term store management” is available to the contributors in each site collection as long as they can get to site settings
- The Term Store is available across the entire farm without being dependent on a web application
- Seems very fast (so far)but add caching to your control just to be sure
Quirks / Disadvantages:
- You must make the Term Set “Available for Tagging” so everyone can see it. This might confuse people if they go to use the Terms in a normal way and see our Term Set. However, since we unchecked the tagging option for each Term, they really can’t do anything with the Term Set.
- To get the custom sorting to work properly, every time you add a new Term you must change the sort order, save it and then change it back to get the CustomSortOrder to populate correctly.
- This does not security trim but that could be added.
- Requires custom code
Summary:
While I just proved this out this week and have not
implemented in production yet, I have tested on multiple web applications and
site collections including anonymous and so far so good. The client flipped over the maintainability
and “fool proof” nature of this solution but I am still searching for
holes. If you have any questions or
comments, especially any inherent flaw, please let me know.
As always, I am a consult available to help implement / customize
the full solution. However, if enough
people find it useful I would be happy to create a Codeplex solution. This information is for discussion and
education purposes only and is in no way guaranteed.
Cheers,
James
You've got to check out this SharePoint Navigation add-on named MegaDropDown for SharePoint 2010 by archetonomy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.archetonomy.com/