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mojoPortal provides a nifty little BreadCrumb control which will show the path to the current page. We have used the control in several of our sites and from time to time, our customer ask us to put the "You Are Here" or some other text in front of the breadcrumbs.

So that's simple, right? Well, yes and no. The BreadCrumb control doesn't have the ability to add a message to the crumbs so we have to add the text in the layout.master of our skin. Okay, that's simple too but the difficulty comes with making the message invisible when the page settings have breadcrumbs turned off or there aren't any to display.

The solution is to create a User Control with all of the logic needed to display the Breadcrumb Message when needed.

The User Control

For simplicity of this article, we will create our user control in a folder named CustomControls which we placed inside the Controls folder (\Controls).

The YouAreHere.ascx file

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="YouAreHere.ascx.cs"
	ClassName="YouAreHere.ascx" Inherits="Controls_YouAreHere" %>
<asp:literal ID="lblYouAreHere" Text="You Are Here:" runat="server" Visible="false" />

Not much magic here, just importing the necessary namespaces and creating our Label which will end up being the Message text. Notice the Label has the Text argument assigned and it is set to "You Are Here:". We will discuss this further later in the article.

The YouAreHere.ascx.cs file (code behind)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using mojoPortal.Web;
using mojoPortal.Web.UI;
using mojoPortal.Web.Framework;
using mojoPortal.Business;
using mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers;


public partial class Controls_YouAreHere : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
	private string sMessage;

	public string Message
	{
		get { return sMessage; }
		set { sMessage = value; }
	}

	protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		if (sMessage != null)
		{
			lblYouAreHere.Text = sMessage;
		}

		PageSettings currentPage = CacheHelper.GetCurrentPage();
		if (currentPage == null) { return; }
		if ((currentPage.ShowBreadcrumbs) || (currentPage.ShowChildPageBreadcrumbs))
		{
			lblYouAreHere.Visible = true;
		}
	}
}

Using the User Control (layout.Master file)

<%@ Register Src="~/Controls/CustomControls/YouAreHere.ascx" TagName="YouAreHere" TagPrefix="i7" %>

<i7:YouAreHere id="YouAreHere1" Message="How You Got Here:" runat="server" />

The first line should be placed after the <%@Register... line. It registers the User Control on the page.

The second line should be placed directly before the <portal:Breadcrumbs... line. This is the User Control Tag which will show the Message. Optionally, you can set a custom message using the Message argument.

Note: i7MEDIA assumes no liability or responsibility for the use of this code. We do however want to help you if you need it so don't hesitate to ask us.

Happy mojo-ing!