Dynamic menu in ASP.net

menu_binding.jpg

While working on asp.net project, we will get situation to create a dynamic menu control which will be configurable by admin.

For doing this task we can do like this

Step 1: I have created a table like below

Step 2: Configure the asp.net menu control like this

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        .menuItem
        {
            border: Solid 1px black;
            width: 100px;
            padding: 2px;
            background-color: #eeeeee;
        }
        .menuItem a
        {
            color: blue;
        }
        .IE8Fix
        {
            z-index: 1000;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        <asp:Menu ID="Menu1" Orientation="horizontal" StaticMenuItemStyle-CssClass="menuItem"
            DynamicMenuItemStyle-CssClass="menuItem" runat="server">
            <%โ€“ This CSS used for fixing the browser problem with IE8โ€“%>
            <DynamicMenuStyle CssClass="IE8Fix" />
        </asp:Menu>
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Step 3: Write the code for binding asp.net menu on basis of category like this

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data; 

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (!IsPostBack)
        {
            populateMenuItem();
        }
    }
    private void populateMenuItem()
    {
        DataTable menuData = GetMenuData();
        AddTopMenuItems(menuData);
    }
    private DataTable GetMenuData()
    {
        using (SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection("Data Source=.\\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\\Database.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True"))
        {
            using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT Id,ParentId,Name FROM tblProduct", con))
            {
                SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd);
                DataTable dt = new DataTable();
                da.Fill(dt);
                return dt;
            }
        }
    }
    /// Filter the data to get only the rows that have a
    /// null ParentID (This will come on the top-level menu items)
    private void AddTopMenuItems(DataTable menuData)
    {
        DataView view = new DataView(menuData);
        view.RowFilter = "ParentID IS NULL";
        foreach (DataRowView row in view)
        {
            MenuItem newMenuItem = new MenuItem(row["Name"].ToString(), row["Id"].ToString());
            Menu1.Items.Add(newMenuItem);
            AddChildMenuItems(menuData, newMenuItem);
        } 
    }
    //This code is used to recursively add child menu items by filtering by ParentID
    private void AddChildMenuItems(DataTable menuData, MenuItem parentMenuItem)
    {
        DataView view = new DataView(menuData);
        view.RowFilter = "ParentID=" + parentMenuItem.Value;
        foreach (DataRowView row in view)
        {
            MenuItem newMenuItem = new MenuItem(row["Name"].ToString(), row["Id"].ToString());
            parentMenuItem.ChildItems.Add(newMenuItem);
            AddChildMenuItems(menuData, newMenuItem);
        }
    }
}

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