Static Breadcrumb with SiteMapPath Control

Today I saw a question in the ASP.NET newsgroup asking about implementing a static (non-hyperlinked) site map path. As you know, the SiteMapPath control in ASP.NET 2.0 displays a breadcrumb showing the current spot in the site map navigation defined in the web.sitemap XML file. Parent nodes in the current navigation path are shown as links to the respective pages, each separated by the path separation character (defined by the SiteMapPath.PathSeparator property). However, if you would like a static breadcrumb, that is, without making parent nodes as links but as plain text, just hook into the ItemDataBound event of the SiteMapPath control and clear the navigation URL (originally taken from the web.sitemap file) for every node.

Assuming a simple SiteMapPath markup as below:

<asp:SiteMapPath ID="SiteMapPath1" runat="server" CurrentNodeStyle-Font-Bold="true" NodeStyle-Font-Size="Small" OnItemDataBound="SiteMapPath1_ItemDataBound" PathDirection="RootToCurrent" PathSeparator=" > " PathSeparatorStyle-Font-Size="Small" RenderCurrentNodeAsLink="false">

Have the following for the ItemDataBound event:

protected void SiteMapPath1_ItemDataBound (object sender, SiteMapNodeItemEventArgs e)
{
  {
    if (e.Item.ItemType == SiteMapNodeItemType.Parent || e.Item.ItemType == SiteMapNodeItemType.Root)
    {
      // Control index may vary if additional controls have been defined in the node template
      ((HyperLink)e.Item.Controls[0]).NavigateUrl = "";
    }
  }
}


The result would look something like this (assuming an apporpriate web.sitemap file is in place):

Without this change, the same SiteMapPath control would look like (parent pages hyperlinked):