Now I understand your problem. generaly i think it would be a very bad idea to set the content property for each of your menuItems in the XAML file. Specialy when you are dealing with hundreds of items. a better way is to use the Data binding feature of WPF and DataTemplates, not to hardcode the menuItem names in the XAML file. I will propuse two solutions for your problem. first solution uses the code-behind approach to create menu items and then bind them to MainMenu's ItemsSource property without using dataTemplates. the following code is the code-behind code for the window:
public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
MenuItems = new ObservableCollection<MenuItem>();
for (int i = 0; i < 40; i++)
{
MenuItem menuItem = new MenuItem();
menuItem.Header = "MenuItem" + i.ToString();
MenuItems.Add(menuItem);
}
MainMenu.DataContext = this;
}
public ObservableCollection<MenuItem> MenuItems
{
get;
set;
}
}
in this code first we created 40 number of menuItems and then we bind them to the DataContext property of the MainMenu object. the following code shows the XAML code of the windows including it's MainMenu object:
<Window x:Class="WpfApplication17.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525" >
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="auto"/>
<RowDefinition/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Menu Grid.Row="0" Name="MainMenu" ItemsSource="{Binding MenuItems}">
</Menu>
</Grid>
</Window>
in this approch you can first create all of your menu items and their names in the code and after that bind them to the Menu object. then you can use styles to set common properties of the menu items.
but a better solution is to use dataTemplates as I did in the following code. in this approach first you created a class to store your menu item names. then with the help of the data template feature of WPF you can bind them to your MainMenu items. the code-behind of this solution is as follows:
public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
MenuItems = new ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem>();
MenuItems.Add(new CustomMenuItem("Item 1"));
MenuItems.Add(new CustomMenuItem("Item 2"));
MenuItems.Add(new CustomMenuItem("Item 3"));
MainMenu.DataContext = this;
}
public ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem> MenuItems
{
get;
set;
}
}
public class CustomMenuItem
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public CustomMenuItem(string name)
{
Name = name;
}
}
in this code I used the CustomMenuItem class to store menuitem names. the MainWindows constructor is respossible for creating the menuitems but you can retrieve them from other sources, like a XML file of database. the XAML code for the MainWindow is like this:
<Window x:Class="WpfApplication17.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WpfApplication17"
Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525" >
<Window.Resources>
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type local:CustomMenuItem}">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"></TextBlock>
</DataTemplate>
</Window.Resources>
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="auto"/>
<RowDefinition/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Menu Grid.Row="0" Name="MainMenu" ItemsSource="{Binding MenuItems}">
</Menu>
</Grid>
</Window>
this way you can retrieve your menuitem names fot\r example from a XML file or from other data sources and they are not hardcoded into you XAML file. then you can use the powerfull features of DataTemplates to view you menu items the way you like.