Built-in Controls

The following standard controls are built into UIElements :

• Button
• Contextual menu
• EditorTextField
• Label
• ScrollView
• TextField
• Toggle

Contextual menus

Contextual menus can present a set of choices or actions to the user, depending on the context. This context is usually the current selection, but the context can be anything.

This topic demonstrates how to add a contextual menu, explains its callbacks, and shows how to respond to user selection.

Enabling contextual menus

To enable contextual menus, attach the ContextualMenuManipulator manipulator to a visual element. This manipulator will display a contextual menu after either a right button mouse up event, or a menu key up event. The ContextualMenuManipulator manipulator also adds a callback that responds to a ContextualMenuPopulateEvent. The following code example shows how to do this:

void InstallManipulator(VisualElement element)
{
    ContextualMenuManipulator m = new ContextualMenuManipulator(MyDelegate);
    m.target = element;
}

void MyDelegate(ContextualMenuPopulateEvent event)
{
    // Modify event.menu
    event.menu.AppendAction("Properties", DisplayProperties, DropdownMenu.MenuAction.AlwaysEnabled);
}

void DisplayProperties(DropdownMenu.MenuAction menuItem)
{
    // ...
}

The callback given to the ContextualMenuManipulator constructor will be invoked last to allow children elements to populate the menu.

Internally the manipulator sends a ContextualMenuPopulateEvent event that is propagated to the target element hierarchy, along the propagation path: from the root of the visual tree to the event target, then back up the visual tree to the root. Along the propagation path, the elements with a callback for the ContextualMenuPopulateEvent event can add, remove, or modify items in the contextual menu.

Responding to the user selection

When an element receives a ContextualMenuPopulateEvent, it adds menu items to the contextual menu by calling either DropdownMenu.InsertAction()or DropdownMenu.AppendAction().

Each of these functions take two callbacks as parameters. The first callback is executed when the user selects the item in the menu. The second callback is executed before displaying the menu. The second callback also checks whether the menu item is enabled.

Both callbacks receive a MenuAction as a parameter. The MenuAction represents the menu item and has the following other useful properties:

• MenuAction.userData contains a reference to user data that might have been used with AppendAction() or InsertAction().
• MenuAction.eventInfo contains information about the event that triggered the display of the contextual menu. Use MenuAction.eventInfo in the action that responds to the event. For example, you can use the mouse position to create and place an object based on the selected contextual menu item.

• 2018–11–02 Page amended with limited editorial review