Populating Popup Menus

• Jan 23, 2019
• 4 minutes to read

Populating Popup Menus

When you place a PopupMenu component onto a form at design time, you can use the menu’s Editor to add and remove items from it. Right-click the popup menu component and select the Customize option. This invokes the Customization Window that provides access to the available bar items and opens the menu’s Editor:

Note

Before customizing and using a popup menu, add a BarManager or RibbonControl to the form and ensure that the popup menu is bound to this BarManager/RibbonControl. By default, a popup menu being added to the form at design time automatically looks for a BarManager/Ribbon Control within the form, and if it’s found, binds itself to the located object via the PopupMenuBase.Manager/PopupMenuBase.Ribbon property. When creating the menu at runtime, you may need to manually bind it to a is not bound to a BarManager/Ribbon Control via these properties.

The following image shows the Customization Window and a popup menu’s Editor:

You can use drag and drop to move items from the Customization Window onto the menu, move items within the menu or remove items from the menu. When you place a bar item onto a menu (or a bar), a link to this item is created, and placed within a target component instead of the item. For general information on items and links, refer to the Bar Item Links document.

To manage an item collection for a popup menu via code, use the PopupMenuBase.ItemLinks collection. It allows you to add, remove and access individual items.

Example

Before you begin:

• Drop the BarManager component onto the form.
• Drop the SvgImageCollection component onto the form.
• Add the following DevExpress SVG icons to the image collection: Copy, Paste, Add File, Folder.

The following example demonstrates how to create a popup menu and bind the menu to the Form. Right-click the form to invoke the menu (at runtime).

C#

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using DevExpress.XtraBars;
using DevExpress.XtraEditors;

namespace DevExpressPopupMenu {
    public partial class Form1 : DevExpress.XtraEditors.XtraForm {
        public Form1() {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
            // Completes the BarManager's initialization (to allow its further customization on the form load)
            barManager1.ForceInitialize();
            // Creates a popup menu.
            PopupMenu menu = new PopupMenu();
            menu.Manager = barManager1;
            // Specifies a collection of vector (SVG) icons.
            barManager1.Images = svgImageCollection1;
            // Creates and initializes the items.
            BarSubItem itemAdd = new BarSubItem(barManager1, "Add");
            BarButtonItem itemAddFile = new BarButtonItem(barManager1, "File", 2);
            BarButtonItem itemAddFolder = new BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Folder", 3);
            itemAdd.AddItems(new BarItem[] { itemAddFile, itemAddFolder });
            BarButtonItem itemCopy = new BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Copy", 0);
            BarButtonItem itemPaste = new BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Paste", 1);
            // Adds the items to the popup menu.
            menu.AddItems(new BarItem[] { itemAdd, itemCopy, itemPaste });
            // Creates a separator before the Copy item.
            itemCopy.Links[0].BeginGroup = true;
            // Attaches the popup menu to the form.
            barManager1.SetPopupContextMenu(this, menu);
            // Subscribes to the 'ItemClick' event handler to process item clicks.
            barManager1.ItemClick += BarManager1_ItemClick;
        }
        void BarManager1_ItemClick(object sender, ItemClickEventArgs e) {
            XtraMessageBox.Show(string.Format("The '{0}' item was clicked.", e.Item.Caption));
        }
    }
}

VB.NET

Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Linq
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports DevExpress.XtraBars
Imports DevExpress.XtraEditors

Namespace DevExpressPopupMenu
    Partial Public Class Form1
        Inherits DevExpress.XtraEditors.XtraForm

        Public Sub New()
            InitializeComponent()
        End Sub
        Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
            ' Completes the BarManager's initialization (to allow its further customization on the form load)
            barManager1.ForceInitialize()
            ' Creates a popup menu.
            Dim menu As New PopupMenu()
            menu.Manager = barManager1
            ' Specifies a collection of vector (SVG) icons.
            barManager1.Images = svgImageCollection1
            ' Creates and initializes the items.
            Dim itemAdd As New BarSubItem(barManager1, "Add")
            Dim itemAddFile As New BarButtonItem(barManager1, "File", 2)
            Dim itemAddFolder As New BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Folder", 3)
            itemAdd.AddItems(New BarItem() { itemAddFile, itemAddFolder })
            Dim itemCopy As New BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Copy", 0)
            Dim itemPaste As New BarButtonItem(barManager1, "Paste", 1)
            ' Adds the items to the popup menu.
            menu.AddItems(New BarItem() { itemAdd, itemCopy, itemPaste })
            ' Creates a separator before the Copy item.
            itemCopy.Links(0).BeginGroup = True
            ' Attaches the popup menu to the form.
            barManager1.SetPopupContextMenu(Me, menu)
            ' Subscribes to the 'ItemClick' event handler to process item clicks.
            AddHandler barManager1.ItemClick, AddressOf BarManager1_ItemClick
        End Sub
        Private Sub BarManager1_ItemClick(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As ItemClickEventArgs)
            XtraMessageBox.Show(String.Format("The '{0}' item was clicked.", e.Item.Caption))
        End Sub
    End Class
End Namespace

The image below shows the result.