<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<siteMap xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0" >

<siteMapNode url="" title="Root" description="">

<siteMapNode url="~/Default.aspx" title="Home" description="" />

<siteMapNode url="~/ContactUs.aspx" title="Contact Us" description="" />

<siteMapNode url="~/Help.aspx" title="Help" target ="_blank" />

</siteMapNode>

</siteMap>

If you run the page you will see the menu like the following:

As, you can see in the above image that I have a asp:Menu control that displays certain links. The menu also have a "help" option which will display the help of the page the user is currently on. The code for this is pretty simple.

protected void Menu1_MenuItemDataBound(object sender, MenuEventArgs e)

{

if(e.Item.Text.Equals("Help"))

{

e.Item.NavigateUrl = BuildHelpLink();

}

}

private string BuildHelpLink()

{

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

string pageName = GetCurrentPageName();

string url = "Help.aspx?pageName=" + pageName;

sb.Append("javascript:OpenHelpWindow('");

sb.Append(url);

sb.Append("','HelpWindow')");

return sb.ToString();

}

private string GetCurrentPageName()

{

string pageNameWithExtension = Page.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath;

return System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(pageNameWithExtension);

}

And now in the Help.aspx page you can look into an xml file and display the help that you needed.

public partial class Help : System.Web.UI.Page

{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

BindData();

}

}

private void BindData()

{

string pageName = Request.QueryString["pageName"] as String;

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(pageName))

{

lblHelpMessage.Text = CacheManager.GetHelpByPageName(pageName);

}

}

}

The CacheManager class caches the xml file and gets the content that you are looking for:

using System;

using System.Data;

using System.Configuration;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Security;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

using System.Xml;

public class CacheManager

{

private const string MESSAGES_FILE_PATH = "~/HelpMessages.xml";

private const string XML_DOCUMENT = "XmlDocument";

public static string GetHelpByPageName(string pageName)

{

return GetMessageByElementName(pageName);

}

private static string GetMessageByElementName(string elementName)

{

string message = String.Empty;

XmlDocument xmlDoc = null;

if (HttpContext.Current.Cache[XML_DOCUMENT] == null)

{

xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();

xmlDoc.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(MESSAGES_FILE_PATH));

// insert into cache object

HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(XML_DOCUMENT, xmlDoc, new System.Web.Caching.CacheDependency(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(MESSAGES_FILE_PATH)));

}

// retrieves the value from the cache object

xmlDoc = (XmlDocument)HttpContext.Current.Cache[XML_DOCUMENT];

message = ((XmlNode)((XmlNodeList)xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName(elementName)).Item(0)).InnerText;

return message;

}

}

Now, if you go to the ContactUs.aspx page and press help you will see a small popup which displays the help for the contact us page.