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[Solved] Empty RadMenu gives an JavaScript error "childNodes is null or not an object"

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This is a migrated thread and some comments may be shown as answers.

Eduardo asked on 23 Apr 2009, 09:31 PM

Hi,

After I update my trial version of the RadControls ASP.NET to the full version I started getting a JavaScript error ('childNodes' is null or not an object). Then I realized that it does not allow adding a RadMenu with no items. I'm adding an empty one to be actually created on the server-side.

I'm using the latest version of the RadControls ASPNET AJAX Q1 2009 (2009.1.402.35)

Here is the code which I could replicate the error:

    
            <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" Inherits="TelerikTests2.WebForm1" %> 
        
            <%@ Register Assembly="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace="Telerik.Web.UI" TagPrefix="telerik" %> 
        
            <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 
        
            <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > 
        
            <head runat="server"> 
        
                <title></title> 
        
            </head> 
        
            <body> 
        
                <form id="form1" runat="server"> 
        
                <telerik:RadScriptManager ID="RadScriptManager1" runat="server"> 
        
                </telerik:RadScriptManager> 
        
                <div> 
        
                    <telerik:RadMenu ID="RadMenu1" runat="server"> 
        
                    </telerik:RadMenu> 
        
                </div> 
        
                </form> 
        
            </body> 
        
            </html>

Isn't it possible to place an empty RadMenu on a page? Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Eduardo

17 Answers, 1 is accepted

Accepted

answered on 30 May 2009, 05:29 PM

Hi.
I waited for the new release (27th May 2009) and still can't achieve the following.

Have a menu control on the page. The menu is build in Code Behind.
The following code only adds the Root Node, the ChildNode is not added and I get the following js error:]
Error: 'childNodes' is null or not an object.

What am I missing?

Dim Menu As New Telerik.Web.UI.RadMenu()
Dim RootNode As New Telerik.Web.UI.RadMenuItem("Root")
Menu.Items.Add(RootNode)

Dim ChildNode As New Telerik.Web.UI.RadMenuItem("Child")
RootNode.Items.Add(ChildNode)

Me.rmMenu = Menu

answered on 01 Jun 2009, 05:39 AM

I've tried both ways, and yes, your way is more logical, doing it the way in my example may require a reference to the root node within the menu.
The issue may be elsewhere but it's difficult to test. My reason for posting it here is that the javascript error matched the one I'm getting.
We have a very dynamic menu structure which can only be built using custom attributes in an XMLDatasource and then on the databinding of the Menu Items. the XMLDatasource (XML String) is currently stored in session on each SessionStart Event. The menu's datasource is set to the XML string stored in session, everything works beautifully.

Now, to avoid running the Logic on each databound item every time the page is loaded I decided to store the ENTIRE MENU in Session.

The idea was to build the menu in the SessionStart event, then set the menu on the page to the menu in Session, using something like this.
Me.rmMenu = Session("MenuProducts")
However, no matter how I build the menu initially, it always seems to give the above mentioned error.
The strange thing is that Me.rmMenu.Items.Count is never 0
Have I been staring at this for too long and am I missing something really simple?

answered on 05 Jun 2009, 03:08 AM

Now there's another problem.

We want to store the XML of the RadMenu in Session and remove the styling logic from the ItemdataBound event handler.
To do this, we need to add the styles to the XML.
Cannot find any documentation on this???
The closest I got is this document http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-ajax/menu_itemsxml.html
It states;

"To discover the way to represent a specific RadMenu feature in XML, create a RadMenu with the feature and use the RadMenu.GetXml method to get the corresponding XML string."

I did exactly that.
created a new Menu

    
                    <telerik:RadMenu  
        
                        ID="rm1" 
        
                        runat="server">  
        
                        <Items>  
        
                            <telerik:RadMenuItem  
        
                                runat="server" 
        
                                Font-Bold="True" 
        
                                Font-Italic="True"   
        
                                Font-Overline="False" 
        
                                Font-Underline="True" 
        
                                ForeColor="#FFEE66"   
        
                                NavigateUrl="http://test1.html" 
        
                                Target="_blank" 
        
                                Text="home">  
        
                            </telerik:RadMenuItem>  
        
                        </Items>  
        
                    </telerik:RadMenu>

When getting the XML, I end up with this.

    
            <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>  
        
            <Menu>  
        
                  <Group>  
        
                    <Item Text="home" NavigateUrl="http://test1.html" Target="_blank" ForeColor="#FFEE66" />  
        
                  </Group>  
        
            </Menu>

How do I get the Font styles into the RadMenu XML file?????

answered on 05 Jun 2009, 11:54 AM

Thanks for the quick reply Albert.

Our Menu is already styled and looks great to the public. The nodes available to the public are populated and everything works fine.
However, when an administrator logs into the web site, they see some additional content which is not available to the public.
For example;
If you're a "content editor" you may see Menu nodes which are awaiting approval, these nodes may have a yellow background.
Or, if you're a member of a certain department, the Menu nodes text may be bold. Or a link to an external site may be underlined.

In the past, we were creating a XMLDataSource file with custom properties, then reading those properties in the Menu's ItemDataBound event and changing the styles on the fly, depending on the logged in users roles/permissions/etc...
To speed things up, we wanted to store the XMLDataSource in Session for each user and bind the Menu to that XMLDataSource. However, we still had to set the styles on ItemDataBound. We looked through the forum and a good suggestion was made by yourself just over a year ago http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/aspnet/menu/problem-loading-cached-radmenu.aspx which we followed.
And the end of all this, we now have an XML in Session that we can "fill" the menu with (Menu.LoadXML(...)) but we can only set the "ForeColor". Is there another way of achieving this without modifying each node on the ItemDataBound event?

p.s. The forum's "Reply" text area doesn't work on the iPhone.

answered on 08 Jun 2009, 12:39 PM

Thanks Albert

You're suggestion works as you described, however, the problem with this solution is that we need to specify a CssClass for each combination of possible scenarios and then apply the appropriate Class.

For example, if a user has 5 roles and each content has 5 possible status levels, then we may want a combination of Styles (Underline, background-color,bold,color,etc......) this is 5 Combinations of 5 CssStyles = 25 CssClasses, if we add 2 more, that's 49 CssClasses!
Although it is possible to build up the Classes Programatically, it would be much simpler to be able to apply the styles directly to the RadMenuItem.
Is there a better solution such as <telerik:RadMenuItem CssStyle = "font-weight: bold !important;text-decoration: underline !important" .. />

[Solved] Empty RadMenu gives an JavaScript error &quot;childNodes is null or not an object&quot;

17 Answers, 1 is accepted

[Solved] Empty RadMenu gives an JavaScript error "childNodes is null or not an object"