NavigationContext

NavigationContext wraps a per-user set of menu/application-code collections sourced from SAIF.Business.Menu (retrieved through an Oracle data layer) and answers "is this page authorized for this user" queries. It is the data-backed authorization mechanism behind BR-MVC-002 and is cached once per session in Session("navdata") by clsControllerBase.Initialize().

Purpose

• Resolves whether a given application/page combination is present in the current user's authorized menu set (IsMenuItem), used to gate every request in clsControllerBase.RedirectUnauthorizedUsers().
• Resolves the current request's matching clsMenuAuthorizedItem (GetCurrentItem/GetCurrentPage/GetItem) for use by consuming controllers that need menu-item metadata (e.g., item sequence number, category) beyond a simple allow/deny check.
• Owns the Oracle data-layer connection (clsMSOracleDataLayer) used to retrieve SAIF.Business.Menu collections for the constructing user.

Context

• Namespace: SAIF.Presentation.Web.MVC
• Assembly/package: SAIF.BOF.Presentation.Web.Infragistics103 (source-bundled)

Public members

Member	Signature	Purpose
MenuAuthorizedItems	Public Property MenuAuthorizedItems() As clsMenuAuthorizedItemCollection	The current user's authorized menu items, populated at construction time from SAIF.Business.Menu.clsMenuAuthorizedItemCollection.GetMenuAuthorizedItems.
DumpDataToString	Public ReadOnly Property DumpDataToString() As String	Diagnostic string combining the authorized-item count and a full dump of menu item data; intended for troubleshooting/logging, not production display.
ApplicationCodes	Public ReadOnly Property ApplicationCodes() As clsApplicationCodeCollection	The set of active application codes, lazily retrieved and cached (per-process, via a Shared/Static field) from clsApplicationCodeCollection.GetActiveApplicationCodes.
MenuCategories	Public ReadOnly Property MenuCategories() As clsMenuCategoryCodeCollection	The set of menu category codes, lazily retrieved and cached from clsMenuCategoryCodeCollection.GetMenuCategoryCodes.
GetItemSeq	Public Function GetItemSeq(ByVal inApplication As String, ByVal inCategory As String, ByVal inPageLink As String) As Decimal	Resolves the menu sequence number for a specific application/category/page-link combination; returns 0 if no matching authorized item exists.
GetItem	Public Function GetItem(ByVal inCategory As String, ByVal inLink As String, Optional ByVal inAnyApp As Boolean = False) As clsMenuAuthorizedItem	Resolves the authorized menu item for a category/link, either across any application (inAnyApp:=True) or scoped to the current request's application path; falls back from an exact match to a non-exact match.
GetCurrentItem	Public Function GetCurrentItem(ByVal inCategory As String) As clsMenuAuthorizedItem	Resolves the authorized menu item for the current request's application and URL path within a given category; falls back from an exact match to a non-exact match.
IsMenuItem	Public Function IsMenuItem(ByVal inApplication As String, ByVal inItem As String) As Boolean	Returns True only if MenuAuthorizedItems.FindPage(appCode, inItem) finds a match for the application resolved from inApplication; the core check behind BR-MVC-002.
GetCurrentPage	Public Function GetCurrentPage() As clsMenuAuthorizedItem	Resolves the authorized menu item for the current request's exact application/URL path, without a category filter; falls back from an exact match to a non-exact match.
New()	Protected Friend Sub New()	Parameterless constructor; does not populate MenuAuthorizedItems or the Oracle data layer — intended for internal/test construction only.
New(inUser)	Public Sub New(ByVal inUser As String)	Constructs clsMSOracleDataLayer("MENU", <OracleDatabase config>), obtains its IDataPortalInfo, and populates MenuAuthorizedItems for inUser.Trim.ToUpper via clsMenuAuthorizedItemCollection.GetMenuAuthorizedItems.

Behavioral notes

• ApplicationCodes and MenuCategories are cached in Shared/Static fields scoped to the method, not the instance — once populated by any NavigationContext instance in the process, subsequent instances reuse the same cached collections rather than re-querying Oracle.*
• GetItem, GetCurrentItem, and GetCurrentPage all read HttpContext.Current.Request directly, so they are only meaningful within an active web request — they cannot be used from background/non-web code.
• The Oracle connection is established via EnvironmentConfigKeys.OracleDatabase (see Configuration); the SQL/Criteria implementation behind GetMenuAuthorizedItems/GetActiveApplicationCodes/GetMenuCategoryCodes lives in SAIF.Business.Menu, outside this library.

Constraints and usage notes

• Constructing NavigationContext(inUser) performs an Oracle round-trip; clsControllerBase.Initialize() mitigates repeated construction cost by caching the instance in Session("navdata") for the duration of the session.
• inUser is upper-cased and trimmed before lookup, so menu authorization is effectively case-insensitive on username.

Note: Statements marked with * were inferred from code structure, naming conventions, or contextual evidence where direct confirmation was not available in source artifacts. Statements marked with ** could not be confirmed; treat as unknown until verified.

Sources

• SAIF.Presentation.Web.MVC\NavigationContext.vb