Adding C# Menus to a Windows Application

How to Create a Menu for a C# Form

Apr 11, 2009
Mark Alexander Bain

C# Menus - Mark Alexander Bain

Most Windows applications have menus on their forms. A C# programmer can create useful menus very easily by using the MainMenu object.

An appropriate menu on a Windows form based application can make the user’s life very much easier. They enable the user to navigate around the application can carry out tasks much more efficiently and they typically consist of items such as:

File
Edit
Tools
Help

The C# programmer can create such menus quickly and easily by using the C# MainMenu Object.

Using the C# MainMenu Object to Create a Menu

The C# MainMenu object is used to create menus in a Windows form based application. The first step, therefore, is to create an instance of the MainMenu Object:

private MainMenu menuFile = new MainMenu();

private MainMenu mMain = new MainMenu();

public static void Main() {

Application.Run(new MainForm());

}

The application now contains an empty menu to be used by the application. In this example the menu set up is contained with in s single function that can be called by the form:

public MainForm()

{

setUpMenu();

}

The next step is to assign the newly created menu as the form’s menu:

public void setUpMenu() {

this.Menu = mMain;

And then to add some top level items:

MenuItem mFile = mMain.MenuItems.Add("&File");

MenuItem mHelp = mMain.MenuItems.Add("&Help");

If the form is compiled then it will show two menu items (“File” and “Help”). The next stage is to start populating the menu.

Creating a Sub Menu

Below each menu heading will be a sub menu. The programmer creates these sub menus by adding items to the top-level menu items:

MenuItem mExit = mFile.MenuItems.Add("&Exit");

If the form is recompiled then the “File” menu will now have “Exit” below it (when user clicks on the menu heading). The items in the sub menus will not do anything yet because they do not have any code associated with them. The programmer, therefore, now needs to add actions to the menus.

Adding Actions to Menus

The programmer adds actions to menus by creating C# event handlers. These will run a function when the user clicks on a menu item. In this example a function “close_app” will be run when the user clicks on the “Exit” menu item:

mExit.Click += new EventHandler(this.close_app);

Obviously the programmer will need to create this new function, which could be something like:

public void close_app(object Sender, EventArgs e) {

Application.Exit();

}

Now the application will close if the user selects the “Exist” menu item.

Creating Sub-sub Menus

Each of the main menus consists of a sub menu and each sub menu consists of a set of menu items. These menu items may have actions associated with then (by adding event handlers) or they may themselves have further sub menus:

MenuItem mWeb = mHelp.MenuItems.Add("&Web");

MenuItem mOnLine = mWeb.MenuItems.Add("&Online Help");

MenuItem mCurrent = mWeb.MenuItems.Add("&Current Version");

Here the “Help” menu will have a sub menu (“Web”) which has a further sub menu of (“Online Help” and “Current Version”). Obviously these menu items may also either have actions associated with them or have further sub menus.

Adding a Menu Separator

Many sub menus have their items divided into define groups. A separator can be used to make the groupings more obvious:

mHelp.MenuItems.Add("-");

MenuItem mAbout = mHelp.MenuItems.Add("&About");

In the above example a bar will separate the “Web” and “About” items in the “Help” menu.

Summary

A programmer adds a menu to a C# Windows form based application by using the C# MainMenu object. Once the menu has been initialized and assigned to the form then menu items can be added to it.

These menu items can have either actions assigned to then (by using a C# event handler) or can have further sub menus added to them. In this way the C# programmer can build an application with easily accessible actions at the user’s fingertips.

Mark Alexander Bain - Mark Alexander Bain is a writer, Mo Bro and consultant for all aspects of software development at dsquared. He has also written regularly ...