Menus

Overview

Smartstore's menu system builds navigation trees for frontend and backend. Menus consist of hierarchical MenuItem nodes resolved to final URLs. Items can originate from the database or be generated in code through menu providers.

Loading and rendering

Use IMenuService to retrieve a menu and feed it to the built-in view component or tag helper:

public class HeaderViewComponent : ViewComponent
{
    private readonly IMenuService _menuService;

    public HeaderViewComponent(IMenuService menuService)
    {
        _menuService = menuService;
    }

    public async Task<IViewComponentResult> InvokeAsync()
    {
        var menu = await _menuService.GetMenuAsync("Main");
        return View(await menu.CreateModelAsync());
    }
}

In Razor you can also render a menu directly:

@await Component.InvokeAsync("Menu", new { name = "Main" })

Building menus in code

Modules can contribute items by implementing IMenuProvider. The following example appends an entry to the Admin menu:

using Smartstore.Collections;
using Smartstore.Core.Content.Menus;
using Smartstore.Web.Rendering.Builders;

public class AdminMenu : AdminMenuProvider
{
    protected override void BuildMenuCore(TreeNode<MenuItem> modulesNode)
    {
        var item = new MenuItem().ToBuilder()
            .Text("Demo")
            .Icon("rocket", "fas")
            .Action("Index", "DemoAdmin", new { area = "Admin" })
            .AsItem();

        modulesNode.Append(item);
    }
}

Instead of pointing to an MVC action you can also supply a link expression with .Url("product:123") or .Url("https://example.com"). The link resolver translates these expressions when the menu renders.

IMenuItemProvider is available for generating dynamic children, such as categories. Providers are discovered through dependency injection and run during menu building. The MenuBuiltEvent fires after all providers execute, allowing last-minute adjustments.

Link resolution

Menu items store their target as link expressions, which the link resolver translates to absolute URLs using ILinkProvider implementations. Built-in providers handle MVC routes, entity links, and external URLs. See the guide for expression syntax and available schemas.

User-defined menus

Administrators can create menus under Content > Menus. The link picker stores targets as expressions consumed by the link resolver. These menus are persisted in the database and rendered via the Menu view component. Widgets may embed such menus into arbitrary zones.