Capturing whole ToolStripMenu tree with ToString

Question

If I run the code in varying areas of my menu tree, I only get the one element, how would you firstly apply this logic to all sub components of this menu tree and secondly, illustrate the whole tree.

The code I have only shows 1 stage of each area applied

  MessageBox.Show((ToolStripMenuItem).ToString());

So the above would only show File or Save or Open, rather than File Open or File Save.

Should I be using a foreach with my toolstripmenuitems?

yeah mate, cut straight from the compiler. I've simply used the messagebox.show for a quick view of the tostring conversion — CO2 Software, Mar 27 '17 at 19:29
apologies, meant to cut out my renamed version, this is simply a toolStripMenuItem — CO2 Software, Mar 27 '17 at 19:31
do you want to search through one top-level menu item (such as File) or through all the top-level menu items (get all children of File, Edit, View etc)? — Nino, Mar 27 '17 at 19:54
The latter, I'm hoping to have the start of the root through each child item to illustrate your whole tree selection — CO2 Software, Mar 27 '17 at 20:01

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 29 '22 at 18:42

Let's say I have MenuStrip with ToolStripMenuItem named fileToolStripMenuItem (with text File) which have subitems New and Open. Furthermore, Open has From file and Recent. To access all File's ToolStripMenuItems (it's children), you need recursive method, which goes through all levels (to access children, grandchildren...)

private IEnumerable<ToolStripMenuItem> GetChildToolStripItems(ToolStripMenuItem parent)
{
    if (parent.HasDropDownItems)
    {
        foreach (ToolStripMenuItem child in parent.DropDownItems)
        {
            
            yield return child;

            foreach (var nextLevel in GetChildToolStripItems(child))
            {
                yield return nextLevel;
            }
        }
    }
}

This method takes first level menu item and returns IEnumerable<ToolStripMenuItem> sou you can then iterate through it (to get name, change some property etc).

Use it like this:

var list = GetChildToolStripItems(fileToolStripMenuItem);

In my example, that will return you the collection of subitems, like this: New, Open, From File, Recent.

You can easily go through collection and get item's text (to display in MessageBox, like this:

MessageBox.Show(string.Join(", ", list.Select(x=>x.Text).ToArray()))

or, if you prefer, like this:

foreach (ToolStripMenuItem menuItem in list)
{
    MessageBox.Show(string.Format("item named: {0}, with text: {1}", menuItem.Name, menuItem.Text));
}

EDIT: after I saw comment that OP's idea is to get all items from MenuStrip, here's an example for that.

I wrote additional method that takes MenuStrip as parameter, iterates throught all ToolStripMenuItems and for each item calls GetChildToolStripItems method. Returns list of all top level items and all children and grand children...

private List<ToolStripMenuItem> GetAllMenuStripItems(MenuStrip menu)
{
    List<ToolStripMenuItem> collection = new List<ToolStripMenuItem>();
    foreach (ToolStripMenuItem item in menu.Items)
    {
        collection.Add(item);
        collection.AddRange(GetChildToolStripItems(item));
    }
    return collection;
}

usage:

 var allItems = GetAllMenuStripItems(menuStrip1)

Hope this helps.

The box explicitly says do not use for thanks, but I appreciate the effort you've gone to, just taking time digesting it, but already upmarked. Appreciated — CO2 Software, Apr 06 '17 at 19:21

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '21 at 10:29

In the end I used a logic around the following syntax, then building up the string at the end

ToolStripMenuItem ThisMenuItem = (ToolStripMenuItem)sender;
string WhatClicked = ThisMenuItem.ToString();
ToolStripMenuItem ThisMenuItemOwnerItem = (ToolStripMenuItem)(ThisMenuItem.GetCurrentParent() as ToolStripDropDown).OwnerItem;

Then you can obviously get deeper with

ToolStripMenuItem ThisOwnersOwnerItem = (ToolStripMenuItem)(ThisMenuItemOwnerItem.GetCurrentParent() as ToolStripDropDown).OwnerItem;

and so forth adding checks to avoid null exceptions.

Capturing whole ToolStripMenu tree with ToString

2 Answers2