How to add submenu to a CMenu in MFC?

Question

I have an MFC app that uses CMenu for the main menu bar.
I haven't been able to create submenus successfully.

I can have the first level of File, Edit, View, etc and their sub menus, but I can't create a submenu off of one of those menus.

For example, I would like to be able to go File->Recent Items->list of items in submenu
I can do this easily enough with the resource editor in VS, but this needs to be done dynamically.

Am I using the right class in CMenu? Any suggestions on what to try?
I haven't found any decent tutorials. Even pointing me towards the right one would be helpful.

Answer 1

I had to do the same thing today, I'm on VS2008 with the Feature Pack (new UI stuff), and was looking at the samples, and there's sample on how to add menu items dynamically (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb983167.aspx)

You need to override the CFrameWndEx::OnShowPopupMenu method.

Max.

Answer 2

Use your resource editor to add a submenu containing one placeholder item. You can then programatically grab a reference to this submenu, add items to it and delete the placeholder item:

CMenu *subMenu = mainMenu.GetSubMenu( menuPosition );

if( subMenu )
{
    for( unsigned i = 0; i < stringArray.size(); i++ )
    {
        subMenu->AppendMenu( MF_STRING, 400 + i, stringArray[i]);
    }

    subMenu->DeleteMenu( ID_SUBMENU_PLACEHOLDER, MF_BYCOMMAND );
}