How do I customize the items that are returned in the Experience Editor navigation bar control?

Question

In the Experience Editor, there is a breadcrumbs-type Navigation Bar that allows editors to navigate the Sitecore tree:

However, some non-page items show up in the drop-down lists of items which causes confusion because they can't be edited in Experience Editor.

How do I limit the items that are returned in those lists?

Answer 1

Clicking the > icon calls the Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Ribbon.Requests.Breadcrumb.GetChildItems.ProcessRequest() method which returns a model containing a List<BreadcrumbItem>. That list is then rendered to the drop-down in the Experience Editor. By replacing the GetChildItems class with a custom class, you can return whatever items you like.

You'll need two things:

A Custom Class

You'll need references to Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak and Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Ribbon to build this class.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Ribbon.Requests.Breadcrumb;
using Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Server.Contexts;
using Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Server.Requests;
using Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Server.Responses;
using Sitecore.Globalization;

namespace Test.Services.SpeakRequests
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This class is decompiled from Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Ribbon.Requests.Breadcrumb.GetChildItems and reproduced here to introduce template filtering
    /// </summary>
    public class BreadcrumbGetChildItems : PipelineProcessorRequest<ItemContext>
    {
        private readonly IList<ID> _HiddenTemplateIds = new List<ID>
                                                        {
                                                            GlobalConstants.BucketTemplateId
                                                        };

        public override PipelineProcessorResponseValue ProcessRequest()
        {
            if (RequestContext.Item == null)
            {
                return new PipelineProcessorResponseValue
                {
                    AbortMessage = Translate.Text("The target item could not be found.")
                };
            }
            var breadcrumbItems = new List<BreadcrumbItem>();
            // This .Where() clause is the only difference between the decompiled code and this custom class (besides the _HiddenTemplateIds list it references, of course)
            foreach (Item child in RequestContext.Item.Children.Where(c => !_HiddenTemplateIds.Contains(c.TemplateID)))
            {
                breadcrumbItems.Add(new BreadcrumbItem(child, RequestContext.DeviceItem));
            }
            return new PipelineProcessorResponseValue
            {
                Value = breadcrumbItems
            };
        }
    }
}

A Config Patch

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/">
    <sitecore>
        <sitecore.experienceeditor.speak.requests>
            <request name="ExperienceEditor.Breadcrumb.GetChildItems" type="Test.Services.SpeakRequests.BreadcrumbGetChildItems, Test.Services"
                           patch:instead="*[@name='ExperienceEditor.Breadcrumb.GetChildItems']" />
        </sitecore.experienceeditor.speak.requests>
    </sitecore>
</configuration>