Applies To: SharePoint

In my last post, Top Link Bar Navigation To XML, I provided you with a script to serialize a site collection’s Global Navigation Nodes to XML. In the post before that, Multi-Level Top Link Bar Navigation (Sub Menus), I showed you how to enable additional sub menus using the native control in SharePoint by editing a simple attribute in the Master Page. However, it quickly became clear that the native navigation editor (Site Actions > Site Settings > Navigation) won’t allow you to edit anything greater than 2 levels despite the control’s support for it. In this final post I’ll show you how to edit the exported XML to add multiple levels and then to import it.

The Script

Copy and paste the code below into notepad and save it as NavigationFromXml.ps1

$xmlFile = "d:\scripts\navigation\ExportedNavigation.xml"
$sourcewebApp = "http://somesite.com"
$destweb = "http://somesite.com"
$keepAudiences = $true #set to false to have it totally ignore audiences (good for testing)

Function CreateNode($xNode,$destCollection){
    Write-Host $xNode.Title

    #make URLs relative to destination
    $hnUrl = $xNode.Url
    #Write-Host "O URL: $hnUrl"
    $hnUrl = SwapUrl $hnUrl $sourceWebApp $destWeb
    #Write-Host "N URL: $hnUrl"

    $hnType = $xNode.NodeType
    if($hnType -eq $null){
        $hnType = "None"
    }

    $hNode = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.SPNavigationSiteMapNode]::CreateSPNavigationNode($xNode.Title,$hnUrl,[Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.NodeTypes]$hnType, $destCollection)
    $hNode.Properties.Description = $xNode.Description
    if($keepAudiences){
        $hNode.Properties.Audience = $xNode.Audience
    }
    $hNode.Properties.Target = $xNode.Target
    $hNode.Update()

    if($xNode.Children.Count -gt 0) {
        foreach($child in $xNode.Children) {
            CreateNode $child $hNode.Children
        }
    } elseif($xNode.Children.IsNode -eq "yes") {
        #single child
        CreateNode $xNode.Children $hNode.Children
    }
}

Function SwapUrl([string]$currentUrl,[string]$sourceRoot,[string]$destRoot) {
	if ($currentUrl -ne "/") {
		if ($currentUrl.StartsWith("/")) {
            #Relative URL
			$currentUrl = $sourceRoot + $currentUrl
		} elseif ($currentUrl.StartsWith($destRoot)) {
            #May be a problem for non root sites
			$currentUrl = $currentUrl.Replace($destRoot,"")
		}
	} else {
		$currentUrl = [System.String]::Empty
	}
	$currentUrl
}

$dw = Get-SPWeb $destweb
$pdw = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::GetPublishingWeb($dw)

$gnn = Import-Clixml $xmlFile

$nodeCount = $pdw.Navigation.GlobalNavigationNodes.Count
Write-Host "  Removing Current Nodes ($nodeCount)..." -ForegroundColor DarkYellow
for ($i=$nodeCount-1; $i -ge 0; $i--) {
    $pdw.Navigation.GlobalNavigationNodes[$i].Delete()
}

if($gnn.IsNode -Eq "yes"){
    #not an array (just 1 top level nav item)
    #Write-Host "1 Only!"
    [void](CreateNode $gnn $pdw.Navigation.GlobalNavigationNodes)
} else {
    #array of nodes, so add each one
    foreach($n in $gnn){
        [void](CreateNode $n $pdw.Navigation.GlobalNavigationNodes)
    }
}

#cleanup
$dw.dispose()

What it Does and How to Use It

There are 4 parameters at the top of the script for you to adjust:

• $xmlFile: The path to use for the XML input
• $sourcewebApp: The URL of the web application (Needed to ensure relative links are imported correctly)
• $destweb: The URL of the site collection you are importing the navigation nodes to
• $keepAudiences: When $true audience values are used, when $false they are ignored (helpful for testing)

Once you set those and save, open the SharePoint Management Shell (You’ll want to run-as a farm administrator) and navigate to the location of the script. You can run it by typing: .\NavigationToXml.ps1

The script will delete all global navigation nodes from the $destweb. It will then use the Import-Clixml command to hydrate a series of custom objects that it will use to build the new navigation nodes. It will build the nodes recursively allowing any number of levels of child nodes (You will have to adjust your Master Page as outlined in my post, Multi-Level Top Link Bar Navigation (Sub Menus), to see any more than the default 2 levels).

How it Works

The main code begins at line 53 where we retrieve the $destweb and then hydrate the $gnn object from the $xmlFile. One of the custom properties used in our NavigationToXml.ps1 script we output was IsNode. In PowerShell an array of one object does not serialize to an array. Rather, it serializes directly to the single object. Using IsNode allows us to know if the object we are working with is an actual node or an array of nodes so that we can avoid exceptions when accessing other properties.

For every node we hydrated we call the function CreateNode (lines 6-36) which creates a node using the custom properties in the passed collection. URLs are made relative to the web application using the function SwapUrl (lines 38-51). This will process every node in the collection along with all of their children.

Editing the XML

So why go through this at all? If you just want to copy global navigation from one site collection to another then just use the simpler NavigationPropagation.ps1 script provided in this article: SharePoint Top Link Bar Synchronization.

However, doing it this way allows you a chance to tweak the XML using notepad (I recommend notepad++). This is the easiest way to add Multiple Levels. For now I’ll explain the basics of the XML document and how to edit it. We’ll go over more of the whys in the Putting it All Together section below.

Structure

To get your base structure it’s best to use the native navigation editor (Site Actions > Site Settings > Navigation) and setup as many of your nodes as you can. Then you can use the NavigationToXml.ps1 script provided in the previous article, Top Link Bar Navigation To XML, as your base document. Trust me, trying to write it all from scratch is dumb. Here’s a quick summary of the results of running that script against navigation that looks like this:

Skipping the automatic link for the site (Navigation Propagation) here is the current structure of those nodes:

• Some Sites (Heading)
  • theChrisKent (AuthoredLinkPlain)
  • Microsoft (AuthoredLinkPlain)
• Google (AuthoredLinkPlain)

Here’s what the exported XML looks like for that same set of nodes:

<Objs Version="1.1.0.1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/powershell/2004/04">
  <Obj RefId="0">
    <TN RefId="0">
      <T>System.Object</T>
    </TN>
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Some Sites</S>
      <S N="Url">/personal/ckent/navtest</S>
      <S N="NodeType">Heading</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Obj N="Children" RefId="1">
        <TN RefId="1">
          <T>System.Object[]</T>
          <T>System.Array</T>
          <T>System.Object</T>
        </TN>
        <LST>
          <Obj RefId="2">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">theChrisKent</S>
              <S N="Url">http://thechriskent.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Obj N="Children" RefId="3">
                <TNRef RefId="1" />
                <LST />
              </Obj>
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="4">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Microsoft</S>
              <S N="Url">http://microsoft.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
            </MS>
          </Obj>
        </LST>
      </Obj>
    </MS>
  </Obj>
  <Obj RefId="5">
    <TNRef RefId="0" />
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Google</S>
      <S N="Url">http://google.com</S>
      <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
    </MS>
  </Obj>
</Objs>

Each node can be found in an Obj element where you can easily find the list of custom properties in the MS section (IsNode, Title, Url, NodeType, Description, Audience, Target and Children). Each of these are simple strings. The only one that can be a little tricky is Audience which we’ll cover in depth in the Adding Nodes section below.

Each Obj element has a unique (to this document) value for it’s RefId. This is just an integer. The only thing to really note here is that each one needs to be unique. They will be the case in any export since this is part of the Export-Clixml command, but you’ll need to pay close attention to this when adding additional nodes. These are also used in Ref elements which you’ll see in various spots. If an object is the exact same as an object previously defined in the document it won’t be defined. Rather it will just get a Ref element instead of an Obj element. The Ref element will have a RefId that is equal to the previously defined Obj‘s RefId.

This mostly comes up with blank children. A good example is the first node with no children above is the node for theChrisKent (lines 22-38). You can see that the Children Obj is defined in lines 33-36. Whereas, the very next node without children (Microsoft lines 39-52) doesn’t have an Obj for Children but rather a Ref (line 50) with a RefId of 3 which you’ll recognize as the RefId specified in line 33. This can seem very confusing at first but it will get easier using the examples below.

Adding Nodes

Adding a single node with no children is pretty easy. Just cut and paste a similar node (Obj) and switch up the RefId to something unique for the document. For instance if I wanted to create another link under Some Sites right after the Microsoft one, I could just copy the Microsoft node (lines 39-52) and paste it directly below its closing tag (</Obj>). It would look something like this:

<Objs Version="1.1.0.1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/powershell/2004/04">
  <Obj RefId="0">
    <TN RefId="0">
      <T>System.Object</T>
    </TN>
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Some Sites</S>
      <S N="Url">/personal/ckent/navtest</S>
      <S N="NodeType">Heading</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Obj N="Children" RefId="1">
        <TN RefId="1">
          <T>System.Object[]</T>
          <T>System.Array</T>
          <T>System.Object</T>
        </TN>
        <LST>
          <Obj RefId="2">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">theChrisKent</S>
              <S N="Url">http://thechriskent.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Obj N="Children" RefId="3">
                <TNRef RefId="1" />
                <LST />
              </Obj>
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="4">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Microsoft</S>
              <S N="Url">http://microsoft.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="10">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Apple</S>
              <S N="Url">http://apple.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
            </MS>
          </Obj>
        </LST>
      </Obj>
    </MS>
  </Obj>
  <Obj RefId="5">
    <TNRef RefId="0" />
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Google</S>
      <S N="Url">http://google.com</S>
      <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
    </MS>
  </Obj>
</Objs>

Pretty straightforward overall. Notice that in line 53 I’ve set the RefId to 10. This is because the only requirement is for it to be unique – It does not have to be in sequence. If you run the NavigationFromXml.ps1 script on the above the site now looks like this:

What about an additional level? For this example we’ll be adding a new sub menu under Some Sites called Pizza with 2 links. Our structure should look like this:

• Some Sites (Heading)
  • theChrisKent (AuthoredLinkPlain)
  • Microsoft (AuthoredLinkPlain)
  • Apple (AuthoredLinkPlain)
  • Pizza (Heading)
    • Pizza Hut (AuthoredLinkPlain)
    • Little Caesars (AuthoredLinkPlain)
• Google (AuthoredLinkPlain)

Here’s what our modified XML looks like now:

<Objs Version="1.1.0.1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/powershell/2004/04">
  <Obj RefId="0">
    <TN RefId="0">
      <T>System.Object</T>
    </TN>
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Some Sites</S>
      <S N="Url">/personal/ckent/navtest</S>
      <S N="NodeType">Heading</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Obj N="Children" RefId="1">
        <TN RefId="1">
          <T>System.Object[]</T>
          <T>System.Array</T>
          <T>System.Object</T>
        </TN>
        <LST>
          <Obj RefId="2">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">theChrisKent</S>
              <S N="Url">http://thechriskent.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Obj N="Children" RefId="3">
                <TNRef RefId="1" />
                <LST />
              </Obj>
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="4">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Microsoft</S>
              <S N="Url">http://microsoft.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="10">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Apple</S>
              <S N="Url">http://apple.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
            </MS>
          </Obj>
          <Obj RefId="11">
            <TNRef RefId="0" />
            <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
            <MS>
              <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
              <S N="Title">Pizza</S>
              <S N="Url">http://apple.com</S>
              <S N="NodeType">Heading</S>
              <S N="Description"></S>
              <S N="Audience"></S>
              <Nil N="Target" />
              <Obj N="Children" RefId="12">
                <TNRef RefId="1" />
                <LST>
                  <Obj RefId="13">
                    <TNRef RefId="0" />
                    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
                    <MS>
                      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
                      <S N="Title">Pizza Hut</S>
                      <S N="Url">http://www.pizzahut.com</S>
                      <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
                      <S N="Description"></S>
                      <S N="Audience"></S>
                      <Nil N="Target" />
                      <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
                    </MS>
                  </Obj>
                  <Obj RefId="14">
                    <TNRef RefId="0" />
                    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
                    <MS>
                      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
                      <S N="Title">Little Caesars</S>
                      <S N="Url">http://www.littlecaesars.com</S>
                      <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
                      <S N="Description"></S>
                      <S N="Audience"></S>
                      <Nil N="Target" />
                      <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
                    </MS>
                  </Obj>
                </LST>
              </Obj>
            </MS>
          </Obj>
        </LST>
      </Obj>
    </MS>
  </Obj>
  <Obj RefId="5">
    <TNRef RefId="0" />
    <ToString>System.Object</ToString>
    <MS>
      <S N="IsNode">yes</S>
      <S N="Title">Google</S>
      <S N="Url">http://google.com</S>
      <S N="NodeType">AuthoredLinkPlain</S>
      <S N="Description"></S>
      <S N="Audience"></S>
      <Nil N="Target" />
      <Ref N="Children" RefId="3" />
    </MS>
  </Obj>
</Objs>

We’ve now added an object with NodeType set to Heading since this is required in order to support having children. We’ve also created a Children Obj that is not a Ref. It has a TNRef and a LST. Inside the LST we just add more of those AuthoredLinkPlain nodes like we did before. You can repeat this same trick for infinite levels down. Running NavigationFromXml.ps1 may result in something like this:

What happened? We can see Pizza but it’s not a sub menu like we expected! These nodes are all there but by default SharePoint doesn’t show them. You’ll need to adjust your Master Page using the techniques in this article: Multi-Level Top Link Bar Navigation (Sub Menus). Once you’ve done that you’ll see something like this:

What about Audiences? This one was a little trickier to get right. The easiest thing to do is apply an audience to a node using the built in navigation editor and then export it using NavigationToXml.ps1 to see what the value should be. But what about when you’ve already done that and you want to manually edit it? An actual audience (Not a SharePoint Group but a compiled audience) is just specified as the GUID followed by 4 semi-colons. If you wish to do more than one then just put a comma between the GUIDs and then add on 4 semi-colons on the end. Here’s what that looks like:

Single Audience:

<S N="Audience">45175fed-9cc8-45ad-9cd6-dda031bf7577;;;;</S>

Multiple Audiences:

<S N="Audience">0a6e46d0-8f45-487d-a249-141fe4a8c429,8b722c7b-a1b4-4f4f-8035-2bac6294b713;;;;</S>

Putting it All Together

This has been a 4 part series on how to improve Top Link Bar navigation:

• SharePoint Top Link Bar Synchronization
• Multi-Level Top Link Bar Navigation (Sub Menus)
• Top Link Bar Navigation To XML
• Top Link Bar Navigation From XML

I’ve provided you with 3 PowerShell scripts (NavigationPropagation.ps1, NavigationToXml.ps1 and NavigationFromXml.ps1) and told you how to make necessary changes to your Master Page. So how do we use all of these?

Because we want multiple sub menus we made the change to our Master Page(s) to set the MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels to 2 (2 is all we wanted, but feel free to go higher as needed). Then we setup our top level links and ran the NavigationToXml.ps1 script just to get our starter structure (We haven’t really needed it since). We made all the adjustments to add our sub menus and nodes then ran the NavigationFromXml.ps1 script to get all that populated.

For changes to our navigation we just update the XML file, run NavigationFromXml.ps1 and then run NavigationPropagation.ps1 to synchronize our changes across our site collections. It works really well. Hopefully you’ll find this system or some parts of it to be helpful too!