XAML Menu Code Example

A menu control is a group of menu items. Each menu item can be used for a certain action. The code samples in this article show how to use a menu control and menu items in a WPF app at design time using XAML.

The complete tutorial is here: Working with WPF Menu Control using XAML and C# .

The following code snippet in XAML creates a menu control at design time.

<Menu Height="22" Name="menu1" Width="200" Margin="10, 10, 5, 5" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" Background="Chocolate">
</Menu>

The following code snippet sets a menu property.

<Menu Height="22" Name="menu1" Width="200" Margin="10, 10, 5, 5" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" Background="Blue" BorderThickness="2">
<Menu.BitmapEffect>
<DropShadowBitmapEffect />
</Menu.BitmapEffect>
</Menu>

The following XAML adds three child menu items to the first menu item.

<MenuItem Header="_File">
<MenuItem Header="_Open" IsCheckable="true"/>
<MenuItem Header="_Close" IsCheckable="true"/>
<MenuItem Header="_Save" IsCheckable="true"/>
</MenuItem>

The output looks following.

A separator is used to separate categories of menu items. We can add a separator to a menu control using the <Separator /> tag.

We can also add sub menus and sub menu items using the MenuItem tag within the parent, a MenuItem tag. The following code adds a separator and sub menus and sub menu items to the menu.

<Separator/>
<MenuItem Header="Sub Items">
<MenuItem Header="Child1 SubItem" IsCheckable="true"/>
<MenuItem Header="Child2 SubItem" IsCheckable="true">
<MenuItem Header="GrandChild2 SubItem" IsCheckable="true"/>
</MenuItem>
</MenuItem>

Now, our new output looks like the following.

The MenuItem.ToolTip tag adds a tooltip to a menu item. The following code adds a tooltip to the Open menu item.

<MenuItem Header="_Open" IsCheckable="true">
<MenuItem.ToolTip>
<ToolTip>
Open a file.
</ToolTip>
</MenuItem.ToolTip>
</MenuItem>

The output with the tooltip looks like the following.

The InputGestureText property is used to add keyboard shortcuts to the menu item. The following code adds CTRL+O to a menu item.

<MenuItem IsCheckable="true" Header="_Open" InputGestureText="Ctrl+O">

The Click event adds the menu item click event handler. The following code adds a click event handler for a menu item.

<MenuItem IsCheckable="true" Header="_Open" Click="MenuItem_Click">

The event handler is defined as in the following in the code behind. I added a message box when the menu item is clicked.

private void MenuItem_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("Menu item clicked");
}

The complete tutorial is here: Working with WPF Menu Control using XAML and C# .