Custom Action with dynamic UrlAction

Question

I have added a menu item to the Personal Actions menu by creating a CustomAction like so:

<CustomAction
    Id="myCustomAction"
    GroupId="PersonalActions"
    Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
    Sequence="1000"
    Title="My Link"
    Description="This is my custom link."
>
    <UrlAction Url="http://www.example.com/" />
</CustomAction>

However, I want a dynamic URL. There is a URL parameter that changes based on the current user. How can I make that happen? (By the way, this is an external URL, and not part of the SharePoint site.)

Answer 1

Create a custom ASP.NET page e.g. ApplPage1.aspx and then let user navigate to this page like this,

<UrlAction Url="_layouts/TestProject/ApplPage1.aspx">

Now in your Page.Load event of ApplPage1.aspx, check user's identity using,

SPWeb theSite = SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context);
SPUser theUser = theSite.CurrentUser;
string strUserName = theUser.LoginName;

Make sure you dispose SharePoint objects as otherwise it will be a massive memory leak. Once you got UserName, you can use If/else or switch statement to navigate user to website you want to navigate him.

Hope it helps.