How to know which dynamically-created menu item is clicked

General
1

Hello:

I am dynamically creating an “Open Recent Files” sub-menu. The submenu items get added just fine and I have a single MenuHandler Event defined. Here’s the code that works:

var recentfiles As DesktopMenuItem = Me.MenuBar.Child("FileMenu").Child("FileRecentFiles")
var mnu As DesktopMenuItem

for itm As Integer = fileNames.Count -1 to 0 step -1
  mnu = New DesktopMenuItem(fileNames(itm), itm)
  mnu.Name = "mnuRecent"
  recentfiles.AddMenu(mnu)
next

Question:

The MenuHandler event does fire when any of the submenu items are clicked, however I don’t know which one was selected. I was thinking I could use the tag property that I’m setting on the NewDesktopMenuItem line (above), but clearly I’m not doing something correctly.

What am I missing here?

2

You can examine the Text property of the MenuItem, or its tag.

In the context of opening a Recent File, it would be common practice to store the FolderItem corresponding to the file in the tag and just call App.Open on it in the MenuHandler.

3

You need to subclass DesktopMenuItem and handle the events there.

4

Fortunately, I don’t have hair because I would have pulled it all out by now until I realized that it needed to be subclassed.

1 Like
5

In REALbasic, Real Studio and original Xojo, the Event had an Index Property (the clicked MenuItem). I remember having asked this question in this Forum, but…

6

Oh Wow!

That made sense as well.

7

usually the menu item have a tag property where you can place any thing a name or number or a class object.
a tag name is better then a index because if you add more items the index could move.

Constructor
DesktopMenuItem(text As String, tag As Variant)