Ui.Menu.addItem() takes a symbol

I'm sure this is by design, but I'm not sure I understand the motivation. The second parameter to the Ui.Menu method addItem() is a Symbol. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to do dynamic menus. If I want to allow the user to select from a dynamic list, I have to assign symbols to each menu item position, then use a lookup table to determine which symbol was associated with which item.

Is there a better way to do this, or could addItem() be updated to take a Lang.Number instead?

Former Member over 10 years ago

Create some dummy handlers and an array of spare symbols. Sorry no time for fancy code at the mo

class MainMenuDelegate extends myMenuInputDelegate {

     function onMenuItem(item) {
        if(:id_custom_0 == item) {
            // do something
        } 
        else if(:id_custom_1 == item) {
            // do something
        else if......
    }
}


var sym = [:id_custom_0,:id_custom_1]; 

			
menu.addItem("New menu item", sym[0]);

travis.vitek over 10 years ago

Yup. That is the lookup table idea that I was talking about above.

As it turns out, the solution is much simpler than that. You can pass a Number. You can also get the value (in the onMenuItem() handler) and use that as if it were a Number. It looks like this works just fine as long as the values that you use are sufficiently small. I can easily use the index in my existing data array as the integer, and all is well. I don't like it, but the workaround is much simpler than what I was expecting to have to do.