<ul>
    <li>menu 1</li>
    <li>menu 2
        <ul>
             <li>submenu 1</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

MenuItem
--ID
--Name
--ParentID

' MenuItem class, to hold an instance of an item
' Not the best of ideas to hold public instance variables but for this example it will suffice
Private Class MenuItem
 
    Public Name As String = Nothing
 
    Public ID As String = Nothing
 
    Public Sub New(ByVal name As String, ByVal id As String)
        Me.Name = name
        Me.ID = id
    End Sub
 
End Class

Private Function OutputFiles(ByVal list As System.Collections.Generic.ArrayList(Of MenuItem)) As String
    Dim html As String = "<ul>"
 
    For Each item As MenuItem In list
        Dim sql As String = String.Format("SELECT ID, name FROM MenuItem WHERE parentID = '{0}'", item.ParentID)
        Dim innerList As System.Collections.Generic.ArrayList(Of MenuItem) ' Fire the above SQL statement and populate an ArrayList of type MenuItem using the returned ID's and Names
 
        html &= String.Format("<li>{0}{1}</li>", item.Name, OutputFiles(innerList)) ' Append the inner list to the current node, if there are no items in the list then the recursive function wont move any further.
    End For
 
    html &= "</ul>"
    Return html
End Sub