orchardcore-navigation

Create Navigation and Menus

You are an Orchard Core expert. Generate navigation menus, admin menus, and menu items for Orchard Core.

Guidelines

• Enable OrchardCore.Menu and OrchardCore.Navigation for menu support.
• Menus in Orchard Core are content items of type Menu.
• Menu items are nested content items within a menu (e.g., LinkMenuItem, ContentMenuItem).
• Admin menus are defined through INavigationProvider implementations.
• Use the Position property to control menu item ordering (lower numbers appear first).
• Admin menu positions follow the pattern: "1", "1.1", "1.2" for nested items.
• Navigation providers must be registered as scoped services.

Enabling Navigation Features

{
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "Feature",
      "enable": [
        "OrchardCore.Menu",
        "OrchardCore.Navigation",
        "OrchardCore.AdminMenu"
      ],
      "disable": []
    }
  ]
}

Custom Admin Navigation Provider

using Microsoft.Extensions.Localization;
using OrchardCore.Navigation;

public sealed class AdminMenu : INavigationProvider
{
    private readonly IStringLocalizer S;

    public AdminMenu(IStringLocalizer<AdminMenu> localizer)
    {
        S = localizer;
    }

    public ValueTask BuildNavigationAsync(string name, NavigationBuilder builder)
    {
        if (!string.Equals(name, "admin", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            return ValueTask.CompletedTask;
        }

        builder
            .Add(S["{{MenuGroupName}}"], NavigationConstants.AdminMenuSettingsPosition, settings => settings
                .AddClass("{{icon-class}}")
                .Id("{{menuId}}")
                .Add(S["{{SubMenuName}}"], S["{{SubMenuName}}"].PrefixPosition(), item => item
                    .Action("Index", "Admin", new { area = "{{ModuleName}}" })
                    .Permission(Permissions.{{PermissionName}})
                    .LocalNav()
                )
            );

        return ValueTask.CompletedTask;
    }
}

Registering Navigation Provider

public sealed class Startup : StartupBase
{
    public override void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddScoped<INavigationProvider, AdminMenu>();
    }
}

Menu Recipe (Creating a Menu via Recipe)

{
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "Content",
      "data": [
        {
          "ContentItemId": "main-menu",
          "ContentType": "Menu",
          "DisplayText": "Main Menu",
          "Latest": true,
          "Published": true,
          "MenuPart": {},
          "MenuItemsListPart": {
            "MenuItems": [
              {
                "ContentType": "LinkMenuItem",
                "ContentItemId": "menu-home",
                "DisplayText": "Home",
                "LinkMenuItemPart": {
                  "Url": "~/"
                }
              },
              {
                "ContentType": "LinkMenuItem",
                "ContentItemId": "menu-about",
                "DisplayText": "About",
                "LinkMenuItemPart": {
                  "Url": "~/about"
                }
              },
              {
                "ContentType": "LinkMenuItem",
                "ContentItemId": "menu-contact",
                "DisplayText": "Contact",
                "LinkMenuItemPart": {
                  "Url": "~/contact"
                }
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Rendering Menu in Liquid Template

{% shape "Menu", alias: "alias:main-menu" %}

Content Menu Item

To add a content item as a menu item:

{
  "ContentType": "ContentMenuItem",
  "ContentItemId": "menu-blog",
  "ContentMenuItemPart": {
    "ContentItem": {
      "ContentItemId": "{{BlogContentItemId}}"
    }
  }
}

Related skills

• Use orchardcore-menus for built-in menu item types, shape alternates, and direct menu rendering.
• Use orchardcore-admin-menu for the admin-configurable OrchardCore.AdminMenu node tree, which is a separate feature from code-first INavigationProvider registration.