dynamic context menus

[fotini]

I'm trying to work with dynamic context menus in VB.NET and running into

what seems to be a very simple but very annoying problem.

Say my user has created a list of "names". Could be 1,2,5.. or 20 names. I

don 't know at design time. Now I want to create a context menu with these

names as the menu text. Creating the menus is a piece of cake but

determining what name the user actually clicked seems to be impossible.

When you create the menu you either pass it a 'menuitem' class or use

AddressOf to point it to a Sub.

Idealy I'd like all the menus to point to a single Sub and use a 'Select

Case' or something to dertermine what was selected but as I said above I

can't figure out how to pass the from the ContextMenu to the sub.

The only way I can see how to do this is to create 20 or so 'shell' event

handlers at design time for the menu items and then use IF's to match them

up to the contextmenu at run time.

Would look something list this

 

Public Sub DoWork (nameIndex as int32)

'Actually process the context menu selected

End Sub

 

Private Sub ContextMenu1_Popup

dim intNumOfNames as Int32 = names.count

if intNumOfNames > 0 then

CM1.MenuItem.Add(names.item(1).ToString, AddressOf (MenuName1))

end if

if intNumOfNames > 1 then

CM1.MenuItem.Add(names.item(2).ToString, AddressOf (MenuName2))

end if

if intNumOfNames > 2 then

CM1.MenuItem.Add(names.item(3).ToString, AddressOf (MenuName3))

end if

Yadda Yadda Yadda

End Sub

 

Protected Sub MenuName1 (byval sender as yadda)

DoWork (1)

End Sub

Protected Sub MenuName2 (byval sender as yadda)

DoWork (2)

End Sub

Protected Sub MenuName3 (byval sender as yadda)

DoWork (3)

End Sub

And so forth and so forth

 

This has two drawbacks. One it creates a ceiling for the number of names the

user can be working with and secondly it's damm messy not to mention

inefficent code.

 

What I'm trying to do is really simply. Determine what menu/name the user

selected. Can any one offer a brighter idea? And please don't say combo or

list box or I'll just cry.

 

fotini

[PlausiblyDamp]

try the following snippet and let me know if it helps.

 

all I've done for the array is in the declaration section

Dim names() As String = {"james", "steve", "dave", "fred"}

 

and the following after the forms designer code

 

Public Sub DoWork(ByVal nameIndex As Int32)
	'Actually process the context menu selected

End Sub


Private Sub ContextMenu1_Popup(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles CM1.Popup
	Dim intNumOfNames As Int32 = names.Length

	CM1.MenuItems.Clear()
	Dim m As String
	For Each m In names
		CM1.MenuItems.Add(m, AddressOf MenuHandler)
	Next


End Sub


Protected Sub MenuHandler(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)

	Dim m As MenuItem
	m = DirectCast(sender, MenuItem)

	DoWork(m.Index)
End Sub

[fotini]

Thanks a lot PlausiblyDamp!You really helped me. It's great!!!!

Have a nice day!