Step 2: Creating a Navigation Connector

Create a new class that extends AbstractNavigationConnector .

Implement the method getInitialNodes() , which returns a javax.naming.NamingEnumeration of the initial nodes. The method could return the nodes only if a condition is true, for example, the user is part of specific role.

The following returns the initial nodes if the user is part of the Java developer role:

public NamingEnumeration getInitialNodes(Hashtable environment) {
    if (isUserInJavaDeveloperRole(environment))
        return new NavigationEnum(initialNodes);
    else
        return NavigationEnum.EMPTY_ENUM;
}

                     

Implement the method getNode() , which returns a INavigationConnectorNode based on a navigation URL passed into the method.

You can implement any logic for returning the INavigationConnectorNode object. One method is to store all the nodes in a Map with the navigation URL as the key. To implement this, you could do the following:

1. Store the nodes in a Map . You can add code for this in an initialization method.

   One implementation is to create a method that recursively traverses the navigation nodes that you created and store them in a map with the fully qualified name (navigation URL) as the key for each one, as follows:

   private void recursivelyFillNamesToNodesMap(NamingEnumeration enum)
               throws NamingException {
       while (enum.hasMoreElements()) {
           Binding b = (Binding) enum.nextElement();
           myConnectorNode node = (myConnectorNode) b.getObject();
           String nodeName = node.getName();
           namesToNodes.put(nodeName, node);
           atomicNamesToNames.put(node.getAtomicName(),nodeName);
           recursivelyFillNamesToNodesMap(node.listBindings(
               "", INavigationConnectorNode.NAVIGATION_GET_CHILDREN));
       }
   }
   
                              

   You could then call recursivelyFillNamesToNodesMap from the initialization method, passing in the initial nodes.

2. Look up the node in the Map based on the navigation URL. The following returns a node in the namesToNodes Map if the user is a member of the Java developer role:

   public INavigationConnectorNode getNode(
               Hashtable environment, String connectorNodeURL) {
       boolean memberOfRole = isUserInJavaDeveloperRole(environment);
       if (memberOfRole)
           return (myConnectorNode) namesToNodes.get(connectorNodeURL);
       else
           return null;
   }
   
                              

Implement the method getNodes() , which returns a javax.naming.NamingEnumeration of INavigationConnectorNode objects based on a set of navigation URLs passed into the method, as follows:

public NamingEnumeration getNodes(
            Hashtable environment, Vector connectorNodeURLs) {
    myConnectorNode node;
 
    int size = connectorNodeURLs.size();
    List nodeBindings = new ArrayList(size);
 
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        node = (myConnectorNode) getNode(
                        environment, (String) connectorNodeURLs.get(i));
        if (node != null) nodeBindings.add(
                        new Binding(node.getName(), node));
    }
 
    return new NavigationEnum(nodeBindings);
}

                     

Implement the method getNodeByQuickLink() in order to map quick links strings to specific navigation nodes.

For more information, see Quick Links .

Implement getConnectorCacheDiscriminators() , which returns a set of keys, with each key representing a different entry point. The method enables caching of navigation nodes, improving performance.

For more information, see Navigation Cache .