Model navigation

Let’s create a content model that will allow your editors to be in control of the website’s main navigation.

We’ll create two content types– one to represent a menu, and one to represent the individual items it contains. The editors can manage these menus in the Content hub to decide what the menu includes.

Define the navigation item type

Start with the content type that represents an individual item in the menu. It needs a title to hold the text of the link, and a target to choose which page the link points to.

Open the Content types application and define a new reusable type. The process will be the same as when you created the Slogan type earlier, but you should use these values instead:

• General
  • Content type name: Navigation item
  • Namespace: Kickstart
  • Name: NavigationItem
  • Icon: xp-chain (search for ‘chain’)
  • Use for: Reusable content
• Fields
  1. NavigationItemTitle
     • Field name: NavigationItemTitle
     • Data type: Text
     • Size: 200
     • Required: True (Enabled)
     • Display in editing form: True (Enabled)
     • Field caption: Title
     • Form component: Text input
  2. NavigationItemTarget
     • Field name: NavigationItemTarget
     • Data type: Pages
     • Required: True (Enabled)
     • Display in editing form: True (Enabled)
     • Field caption: Target
     • Form component: Page selector
     • Maximum number of pages: 1

Create the menu type

Next, you need another reusable content type to represent the menu as a whole.

Most importantly, it should have a field for referencing the items it contains, much like the Landing page referenced a Slogan in the earlier step.

Additionally, it should have a Display name and Code name in case there are multiple menus that need to be handled in code or displayed in a list.

Define a new content type with the following values:

• General
  • Content type name: Navigation menu
  • Namespace: Kickstart
  • Name: NavigationMenu
  • Icon: xp-list-bullets (search for ‘list-bullets’)
  • Use for: Reusable content
• Fields
  1. NavigationMenuDisplayName
     • Field name: NavigationMenuDisplayName
     • Data type: Text
     • Size: 200
     • Required: True (Enabled)
     • Display in editing form: True (Enabled)
     • Field caption: Display name
     • Form component: Text input
  2. NavigationMenuCodeName
     • Field name: NavigationMenuCodeName
     • Data type: Text
     • Size: 200
     • Required: True (Enabled)
     • Display in editing form: True (Enabled)
     • Field caption: Code name
     • Form component: Text input
  3. NavigationMenuItems
     • Field name: NavigationMenuItems
     • Data type: Content items (Pages and reusable content in newer versions)
     • Display in editing form: True (Enabled)
     • Field caption: Items
     • Form component: Content item selector (Combined content selector in newer versions)
     • Content type: Navigation item

Now, the list in your Content types application should look like this:

Generate the code

As with the Slogan type earlier, open a command window in the Kickstart.Web directory and generate code files for the Navigation item and Navigation menu content types.

dotnet run --no-build -- --kxp-codegen --type "ReusableContentTypes" --location "../Kickstart.Entities/{type}/{name}" --include "Kickstart.NavigationItem;Kickstart.NavigationMenu"

Build the main menu

With these content types in place, we can create new items to define what the main menu should contain.

In the Content hub application, create a new content item of the type Navigation menu.

Set its Content item name to Main navigation.

On the next screen, set the following properties:

• DisplayName: Main navigation
• CodeName: MainNavigation

Then, under Items click Create new to define two items corresponding to the website’s pages:

1. Home
   • Content item name: Home link
   • Location: Uncategorized (no folder)
   • Content type: Navigation item
   • Title: Home
   • Target: Home
2. Contact us
   • Content item name: Contact us link
   • Location: Uncategorized (no folder)
   • Content type: Navigation item
   • Title: Contact us
   • Target: Contact us

At this point, your items in the Content hub should look like this:

Keep following along to see how to render this newly-defined menu on your website!