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Automatic Data Binding

  • 2 minutes to read

Menu has a built-in ability to automatically retrieve data from a data source that supports the IHierarchicalEnumerable or IHierarchicalDataSource interface. This topic describes the conditions that allow a Menu to bind automatically.

A Menu can recognize data items and retrieve some item characteristics from the data fields named in a specific way. If however, any of the data-related properties of a Menu (such as TextField, ImageUrlField, etc.) have been set, then the mapping of the associated object properties will proceed according to Data Binding Using Mapping Properties.

Data fields and item properties name match

During binding, a Menu implements its automatic binding ability by retrieving item characteristics from those data fields whose names coincide with certain property names of a MVCxMenuItem object. The tables below list the names of the object properties that can be mapped during automatic binding, and the matching data field names you should use in the data source for mapping to work.

Data field names Item properties that can be set automatically
BeginGroup MenuItem.BeginGroup (via MVCxMenuItem.BeginGroup)
Checked MenuItem.Checked (via MVCxMenuItem.Checked)
Enabled MenuItem.Enabled (via MVCxMenuItem.Enabled)
GroupName MenuItem.GroupName (via MVCxMenuItem.GroupName)
ImageUrl ImagePropertiesBase.Url (via MVCxMenuItem.Image.Url)
Name MenuItem.Name (via MVCxMenuItem.Name)
NavigateUrl MenuItem.NavigateUrl (via MVCxMenuItem.NavigateUrl)
Selected MenuItem.Selected (via MVCxMenuItem.Selected)
Target MenuItem.Target (via MVCxMenuItem.Target)
Text MenuItem.Text (via MVCxMenuItem.Text)
ToolTip MenuItem.ToolTip (via MVCxMenuItem.ToolTip)
VisibleIndex MenuItem.VisibleIndex (via MVCxMenuItem.VisibleIndex)

The following image illustrates the process of data retrieval during automatic binding to a particular type of data source - XmlDataSource.

Menu_BindAuto

Binding to a Site Map

Since the properties of a SiteMapNode object have specific names, a Menu is designed to automatically bind to a Site Map source with node attributes of similar names. In the binding process, corresponding properties of individual MVCxMenuItem objects are automatically associated with these item attributes, and mapped accordingly. See the table below for name correspondence.

Site Map node attributes Corresponding Item object properties
Description MVCxMenuItem.ToolTip
Title MVCxMenuItem.Text
Url MVCxMenuItem.NavigateUrl

Note

The structure of a Site Map allows some flexibility in the naming of item attributes. After a Menu detects the item attributes named title, url and description in the bound Site Map source, the conditions described in the above section apply.