Menu

Menus are the pull-down objects that appear on the MenuBar of a Frame or within other menus. They contain MenuItems or CheckboxMenuItems for the user to select. The Menu class subclasses MenuItem (so it can appear on a Menu, too) and implements MenuContainer. Tear-off menus are menus that can be dragged, placed elsewhere on the screen, and remain on the screen when the input focus moves to something else. Java supports tear-off menus if the underlying platform does. Motif (UNIX) supports tear-off menus; Microsoft Windows platforms do not.

Menu Methods

• public Menu ()
• The first constructor for Menu creates a menu that has no label and cannot be torn off. To set the label at a later time, use setLabel().
• public Menu (String label)
• This constructor for Menu creates a Menu with label displayed on it. The Menu cannot be torn off.
• public Menu (String label, boolean tearOff)
• This constructor for Menu creates a Menu with label displayed on it. The handling of tearOff is platform dependent.

  Figure 10.3 shows a tear-off menu for Windows/95 and Motif. Since Windows does not support tear-off menus, the Windows menu looks and acts like a regular menu.

Figure 10.3: Tear-off menu

Items

• public int getItemCount()
  public int countItems ()
• The getItemCount() method returns the number of items within the Menu. Only top-level items are counted: if an item is a submenu, this method doesn't include the items on it.

  countItems() is the Java 1.0 name for this method.

• public MenuItem getItem (int index)
• The getItem() method returns the MenuItem at position index. If index is invalid, getItem() throws the ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException run-time exception.
• public synchronized MenuItem add (MenuItem item)
• The add() method puts item on the menu. The label assigned to item when it was created is displayed on the menu. If item is already in another menu, it is removed from that menu. If item is a Menu, it creates a submenu. (Remember that Menu subclasses MenuItem.)
• public void add (String label)
• This version of add() creates a MenuItem with label as the text and adds that to the menu. If label is the String "-", a separator bar is added to the Menu.
• public synchronized void insert(MenuItem item, int index)
• The insert() method puts item on the menu at position index. The label assigned to item when it was created is displayed on the menu. Positions are zero based, and if index < 0, insert() throws the IllegalArgumentException run-time exception.
• public synchronized void insert(String label, int index)
• This version of insert() method creates a MenuItem with label as the text and adds that to the menu at position index. If label is the String "--", a separator bar is added to the Menu. Positions are zero based, and if index < 0, this method throws the IllegalArgumentException run-time exception.
• public void addSeparator ()
• The addSeparator() method creates a separator MenuItem and adds that to the menu. Separator menu items are strictly cosmetic and do not generate events when selected.
• public void insertSeparator(int index)
• The insertSeparator() method creates a separator MenuItem and adds that to the menu at position index. Separator menu items are strictly cosmetic and do not generate events when selected. Positions are zero based. If index < 0, insertSeparator() throws the IllegalArgumentException run-time exception.
• public synchronized void remove (int index)
• The remove() method removes the MenuItem at position index from the Menu. If index is invalid, remove() throws the ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException run-time exception. index is zero based, so it can range from 0 to getItemCount()-1.
• public synchronized void remove (MenuComponent component)
• This version of remove() removes the menu item component from the Menu. If component is not in the Menu, nothing happens.
• public synchronized void removeAll()
• The removeAll() removes all MenuItems from the Menu.

• public synchronized void addNotify ()
• The addNotify() method creates the Menu peer with all the MenuItems on it.
• public synchronized void removeNotify ()
• The removeNotify() method destroys the peer of the MenuComponent and removes it from the screen. The peers of the items on the menu are also destroyed.

• public boolean isTearOff ()
• The isTearOff() method returns true if this Menu is a tear-off menu, and false otherwise. Once a menu is created, there is no way to change the tear-off setting. This method can return true even on platforms that do not support tear-off menus.
• public String paramString ()
• The paramString() method of Menu should be protected like other paramString() methods. However, it is public so you have access to it. When you call the toString() method of a Menu, the default toString() method of MenuComponent is called. This in turn calls paramString(), which builds up the string to display. At the Menu level, the setting for TearOff (from constructor) and whether or not it is the help menu (from MenuBar.setHelpMenu()) for the menu bar are added. If the constructor for the Menu was new Menu (`File`), the results of toString() would be:

java.awt.Menu [menu0,label=File,tearOff=false,isHelpMenu=false] 

Menu Events

A Menu does not generate any event when it is selected. An event is generated when a MenuItem on the menu is selected, as long as it is not another Menu. You can capture all the events that happen on a Menu by overriding postEvent().