Introduction

· Menus make it easy to access the functionality and take less space and make your application look more organized.

· Menus contain top – level items and drop – down items.

o Top – level items: all visible items are top-level menus

o Drop – down items: non – visible items are dropdown menus and also call it as child menus of a top – level menu.

Classes required to create a Menu

1. MenuStrip:

· This control is like a container will hold all the top – level menus going to be created.

· This control will be available under “System.Windows.Forms” namespace.

Decalration of a MenuStrip control

Import the namespace – using System.Windows.Forms

// Declare the menustrip object.

MenuStrip menuItems = new MenuStrip();

2. ToolStripMenuItem :

· This class is used to create menu items like top – level or drop – down menus going to be created.

· It can also represent a submenu of another ToolStripMenuItem object. ToolStripMenuItem objects are viewed by the user, whereas a MenuStrip object simply establishes a container where menu items appear.

· This class will be available under “System.Windows.Forms” namespace.

Decalration of a MenuItem class

Menu can be created using a Text or Image or both.

// Take a ToolStripMenuItem to add the menu item with string.

ToolStripMenuItem menuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem(“File”);

Or

// Take a ToolStripMenuItem to add the menu item with Image.

ToolStripMenuItem menuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem(new Bitmap(“path of the image to load”));

Or

// Take a ToolStripMenuItem to add the menu item with Strng and Image.

ToolStripMenuItem menuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem((“File”, new Bitmap(“path of the image to load”));

These are the main classes to create any kind of menu.

Using this information will know how to create dynamic menus.

Program: Going to create dynamic simple menus

Output: looks like this

File Edit Help - Top – level menus

New Copy AboutMe - drop – down menus

Open Cut ContactUs

Exit Pate Help

Step-By-Step code explanation to create a dynamic menu

1. Define menus required.

Note: There will be so many ways to approach declaring the menu items but here I used by taking dictionary object.

// Create Main menu and child menus in a ditcionary object as key pair values.

Dictionary<string, string[]> displayMenus = new Dictionary<string, string[]>();

// Define the child menus based on the each main menu on the basis of key.

displayMenus.Add(“File”, new string[] { “New”, “Open”, “Exit” });

displayMenus.Add(“Edit”, new string[] { “Copy”, “Cut”, “Paste” });

displayMenus.Add(“Help”, new string[] { “AboutMe”, “ContactUs”, “Help” });

2. Write a function to create menus by taking the dictionary object as parameter.

/// <summary>

/// This method will create a menu based on the menus

/// and it’s submenus defined.

/// </summary>

/// <param name=”displayMenus”>

/// Menus and it’s submenus in a dictioanry object

/// </param>

/// <returns>

/// Returns a collection of a toolstripmennu items.

/// </returns>

private List<ToolStripMenuItem> CreateMenu(Dictionary<string, string[]> displayMenus)

{

// Declare ToolStripMenuItem object.

List<ToolStripMenuItem> menuItems = new List<ToolStripMenuItem>();

// Loop through all main menus.

foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string[]> menu in displayMenus)

{

// Take a ToolStripMenuItem to add the menu item.

ToolStripMenuItem menuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem(menu.Key);

// Set a name to the menu.

menuItem.Name = menu.Key;

// Create child menu items for a menu item.

this.CreateChildMenus(menuItem, menu.Value);

switch (menu.Key)

{

case “File”:

case “Edit”:

// This is by default.

// menuItem.Alignment = ToolStripItemAlignment.Left;

break;

case “Help”:

menuItem.Alignment = ToolStripItemAlignment.Right;

break;

}

// Add each menu item to the menu strip item.

menuItems.Add(menuItem);

}

return menuItems;

}

3. Write a function to create child menus by taking the parent menu and the child menus going to be created.

/// <summary>

/// Thsi method will create a child menus of a menu item.

/// </summary>

/// <param name=”parentMenuToAddChildMenus”>

/// Parent menu item to add child menu items.

/// </param>

/// <param name=”childMenus”>

/// Child menu items going to be created.

/// </param>

private void CreateChildMenus(ToolStripMenuItem parentMenuToAddChildMenus, string[] childMenus)

{

// Loop through all child menus.

foreach (string childMenu in childMenus)

{

// Take a ToolStripMenuItem to add the menu item.

ToolStripMenuItem childMenuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem(childMenu);

// Set a name to the menu.

childMenuItem.Name = childMenu;

// Hnadle the event for the menu created.

childMenuItem.Click += new EventHandler(ChildMenu_Click);

// Add each child menu to its parent menu item.

parentMenuToAddChildMenus.DropDown.Items.Add(childMenuItem);

}

}

4. Write an event handler common to all the menu items.

/// <summary>

/// This method will handle the click event for each menu.

/// </summary>

/// <param name=”sender”>Tool strip menu item.</param>

/// <param name=”e”>Event args.</param>

private void ChildMenu_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

ToolStripMenuItem sourceMenuItem = (ToolStripMenuItem)sender;

string selectedMenu = string.Empty;

// Selected menu item

switch (sourceMenuItem.Name)

{

case “New”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Open”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Exit”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Edit”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Copy”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Paste”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “AboutMe”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “ContactUs”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

case “Help”:

// Required statements here.

selectedMenu = sourceMenuItem.Text;

break;

}

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedMenu))

{

MessageBox.Show(string.Concat(

selectedMenu,

” feature is under development “));

}

}

5. add the created menu items collection to the MenuStrip object

Conclusion:

· This is the procedure to create dynamic menus in windows application.

· If you want to create your custom type dynamic menus then modify the code according to your needs in a dictionary object as defined in step1.

Note: This is just a sample code to guide you how a menu can be created.

Download: dynamicmenuscreation.zip