WPF FAQ - Context Menu

It’s possible that you have a list of commands that you simply want to bind to a context menu. You can do so as follows.

For example, if you have list of custom commands, each of this type:

[C#]
public class MyCommand
{
public Name{get; set;}
public Command{get; set;}
}

Then you can bind a list containing the above items to a ContextMenu as follows:

<ContextMenu>
  <ContextMenu.ItemContainerStyle>
    <Style TargetType='{x:Type MenuItem}'>
      <Setter Property='Command' Value='{Binding ContextMenuItemCommand}'/>
    </Style>
  </ContextMenu.ItemContainerStyle>
</ContextMenu>

<ContextMenu ItemsSource={StaticResource myList}></ContextMenu>

Instead of setting up event handlers on all the MenuItems you can listen to those events as they bubble up to the context menu as follows:

[XAML]

            MenuItem1
            MenuItem2
            MenuItem3
            MenuItem4

Or you can setup the same thing in code as follows:

[C#]
menuItem1.AddHandler(MenuItem.ClickEvent, new RoutedEventHandler(MnItem_Click));

The event handler would then be something like:

private void MnItem_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
	MenuItem item = e.Source as MenuItem;
            
	....
}

This example uses the ContextMenuService.ShowOnDisabled property to show the context menu for a disabled button.

[XAML]

<Button Height='30' Content='Disabled Button' IsEnabled='False' 
     ContextMenuService.ShowOnDisabled='True'>
  <Button.ContextMenu>
    <ContextMenu>
      <MenuItem Header='Item 1'/>
      <MenuItem Header='Item 2'/>
      <MenuItem Header='Item 3'/>
    </ContextMenu>
  </Button.ContextMenu>
</Button>

To automatically close the context menu after a set time interval, you can use a Timer and send an Esc keystroke after the desired time interval as shown.

[C#]

private void timer1_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
SendKeys.Send('{ESC}');
timer1.Stop();
}

private void contextMenu1_Popup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
//set interval to 5 seconds
timer1.Interval = 5000;
timer1.Start();
}