Sharepoint Advanced Tips: Adding Breadcrumb Navigation for SharePoint Application Pages Programmatically

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">When
creating a new Application Page (an .aspx page deployed to the c:\program
files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\layouts
directory) you can easily manually fill the content place holder provided by
the application.master in order to obtain a page that seems really to be an Out
of The Box SharePoint Application Page.

Page Title (Browser Page
Title)

<style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Content IDstyle="COLOR: blue">="Content4" style="COLOR: red">ContentPlaceHolderIDstyle="COLOR: blue">=style="COLOR: blue">"PlaceHolderPageTitle" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server"style="COLOR: blue">>
    style="COLOR: blue"><style="COLOR: #a31515">SharePoint:style="COLOR: #a31515">EncodedLiteral style="COLOR: red">ID=style="COLOR: blue">"EncodedLiteral2" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server" Textstyle="COLOR: blue">="Delete Items"
EncodeMethodstyle="COLOR: blue">='HtmlEncode' style="COLOR: blue">/>
</style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Contentstyle="COLOR: blue">>

Page Title (Displayed in th
Application Page)

<style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Content IDstyle="COLOR: blue">="Content3" style="COLOR: red">ContentPlaceHolderIDstyle="COLOR: blue">=style="COLOR: blue">"PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server"style="COLOR: blue">>
    style="COLOR: blue"><style="COLOR: #a31515">SharePoint:style="COLOR: #a31515">EncodedLiteral style="COLOR: red">ID=style="COLOR: blue">"EncodedLiteral1" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server" Textstyle="COLOR: blue">="Delete Items from a
Custom List" EncodeMethodstyle="COLOR: blue">='HtmlEncode' style="COLOR: blue">/>
</style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Contentstyle="COLOR: blue">>

Page Description (Displayed in th
Application Page)

<style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Content IDstyle="COLOR: blue">="Content2" style="COLOR: red">ContentPlaceHolderIDstyle="COLOR: blue">=style="COLOR: blue">"PlaceHolderPageDescription" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server"style="COLOR: blue">>
    style="COLOR: blue"><style="COLOR: #a31515">SharePoint:style="COLOR: #a31515">EncodedLiteral style="COLOR: red">ID=style="COLOR: blue">"EncodedLiteral3" style="COLOR: red">runat=style="COLOR: blue">"server" Textstyle="COLOR: blue">="Use this page to delete
items from a Custom List" style="COLOR: red">EncodeMethod=style="COLOR: blue">'HtmlEncode' style="COLOR: blue">/>
</style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Contentstyle="COLOR: blue">>

The above code sample will produce the
following result:

style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: gray; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Adding
a siteMapNode element in the layouts.sitemap
href="http://weblogs.asp.net/members/jantie.aspx">Jan Tielens has
written several posts on that topic. The exposed several approaches use xml
files and deployment techniques in order to make your custom Application Page to
be known by SharePoint as one of its native Application Pages. Doing that allows
the native SharePoint breadcrumb generating mechanism to place automatically a
Breadcrumb in your custom Application Page.

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">For
more information you can visit:

href="http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2007/09/10/adding-breadcrumb-navigation-for-sharepoint-application-pages.aspx">Adding
Breadcrumb Navigation for SharePoint Application Pages

href="http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2008/04/16/adding-breadcrumb-navigation-to-sharepoint-application-pages-the-easy-way.aspx">Adding
Breadcrumb Navigation to SharePoint Application Pages, the Easy Way

href="http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2008/10/10/adding-breadcrumb-navigation-to-application-pages-in-sharepoint-central-administration.aspx">Adding
Breadcrumb Navigation to Application Pages in SharePoint Central
Administration

style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: gray; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Adding
Breadcrumb Programmatically

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">This
approach uses server-side code (C# or VB .Net). It is the opposite approach compared to Jan's one because we will customize SharePoint only at the page level.

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Pros:
Your
SharePoint customizations of the Application Page stay at the level of the
page, so you can deploy all using a single Feature.
You can build your own
navigation (SiteCollection Root Web > Web Site1 >..> Web Site
n, Web Site n > List, Web Site n > Doc Lib,
etc.)

Cons:
You have to decide about what navigation you
want.
You have to build the navigation using C# or VB .Net.
You might
have to put parameters in the URL when calling the page (List ID, Doc Lib ID,
Page Name,etc.) if you do not use a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460194.aspx">CustomAction
Element to call the Application Page.

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">In
the following code sample I will programmatically, using C#, add a breadcrumb to an Application Page called by a new entry in the Action Menu of a list.

So, with this
UrlAction
:

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; MARGIN: 1px 0px; COLOR: gray; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">style="COLOR: blue"><UrlAction
Url=style="COLOR: black">"~site/_layouts/custom
directory/myCustomApplicationPage.aspx?id={ListId}style="COLOR: black">"/>

style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: gray; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">At
the first Load of the page

Getting the Breadcrumb element(s) from URL and/or
SPContext
Storing some of the elements in an Hidden Control for the
PostBack of the page.

style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: gray; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">For
the Postback
Getting the
Breadcrumb element(s) from the Hidden Control.

style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: gray; FONT-FAMILY: arial; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">In
any case
Building the Breadcrumb
HTML
Override the RenderChildren method of the Application page to fill the
PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb with the Breadcrumb HTML

size=2>

The following code sample shows how to perform these operations using C#:

style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
align=left>style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Courier New'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes">style="mso-spacerun: yes">
<style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Content style="COLOR: red">ID="Content1"color=#000000> ContentPlaceHolderIDstyle="COLOR: blue">="PlaceHolderMain" style="COLOR: red">runatstyle="COLOR: blue">="server">"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
align=left>style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Courier New'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes">style="mso-spacerun: yes">color=#000000> style="COLOR: blue"><aspstyle="COLOR: blue">:Labelcolor=#000000> IDstyle="COLOR: blue">="lblItemsToDeleteList"
runatstyle="COLOR: blue">="server"></style="COLOR: #a31515">asp:style="COLOR: #a31515">Labelstyle="COLOR: blue">>

style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
align=left>style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Courier New'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes">style="mso-spacerun: yes">color=#000000> style="COLOR: blue"><inputcolor=#000000> typestyle="COLOR: blue">="hidden" style="COLOR: red">runat="server"color=#000000> idstyle="COLOR: blue">="listid" style="COLOR: blue">/>

style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
align=left>style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: blue; FONT-FAMILY: 'Courier New'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes">

style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none"
align=left>style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Courier New'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-no-proof: yes">style="mso-spacerun: yes">color=#000000> style="COLOR: blue">public style="COLOR: blue">void Page_Load(style="COLOR: blue">object sender, style="COLOR: #2b91af">EventArgs
e)