HMENU: How to get parent menu? (build in function)

[Sh@dow]

Hi everyone,
Faced with a following problem:

I have a drop down menu with items. Each item has a sub menu.
The structure is as follows:
subid1
id0----subid1
subid1

subid1
id1----subid1
subid1

all sub items has the same id so when WM_MENUCOMMAND arrives it is necessary to determine the parent menu.
Found nothing in MSDN.
Do i need to interate through all id-x menus comparing the handle from WM_MEMUCOMMAND to current menu handle? Does win has internal tree of menu's handles?
Thanks in advance.

[Igor Vartanov]

all sub items has the same id so when WM_MENUCOMMAND arrives it is necessary to determine the parent menu.

No, only thing you need is just to give them unique ids.

[Sh@dow]

No, only thing you need is just to give them unique ids.

The problem is that my menu is not static (number of idx may vary on program running). So when i add a new idx menu item i must generate unique menu id's for it. So there must be a dynamic storage for them. This requires additional code in message loop to run through all id's and find necessary.
Well this is not difficult to implement. I was just wondering is there any already made solution for that in WinAPI?

PS: The way with menu handle searching seems better because i can specify the same id's for submenu items. Am i right?

[Igor Vartanov]

number of idx may vary on program running

It depends on many details. Number of menu items may vary while each item may have a static/predefined command id.

Menu is intended to send commands. Commands must be unique. It's up to application how it manages to handle that. Period.

While being generated menu ids may be grouped in ranges. This might help to deduce the parent menu alright.

[Khiem]

You didn't tell us how each subitem was added, because it needs to know whose parent it is, shouldn't that be the parent handle it needs to store for later use ?

[Sh@dow]

It depends on many details. Number of menu items may vary while each item may have a static/predefined command id.

Yes. My case is as you described above. Number of menu items is variable. (when user adds a new graph to plot a new menu item is added). Each menu item has fixed number of sub-items. I think that these sub menu items must have the same id. But when message comes containing id we must find to what parent menu does this id belongs.

Menu is intended to send commands. Commands must be unique. It's up to application how it manages to handle that. Period.

Yes. As i described above the unique command will help to distinguish sub-menu id from other sub-menu id. no information about parent menu. sad that windows does builds the tree

While being generated menu ids may be grouped in ranges. This might help to deduce the parent menu alright.

You are talking about sub menu id?

You didn't tell us how each subitem was added, because it needs to know whose parent it is, shouldn't that be the parent handle it needs to store for later use ?

If my sub-items have different id's than on adding sub-item i can save the parent menu handle than to identify the menu item. But as i said earlier my sub-items are not unique. (unique only in the menu item but not across the other menu items)

It's much easier for me to plot the situation

.......................id0
menu1 (no id).....id1
........................id2

........................id0
menu2 (no id).....id1
........................id2

........................id0
menu3 (no id).....id1
........................id2

The other idea came into my mind. I can generate ABSOLUTELY unique id's but storing them in array adding a parent menu handle.

.............................ARRAY WILL HAVE:
........................id0 (menu1 handle)
menu1 (no id).....id1 (menu1 handle)
........................id2 (menu1 handle)

........................id3 (menu2 handle)
menu2 (no id).....id4 (menu2 handle)
........................id5 (menu2 handle)

........................id6 (menu3 handle)
menu3 (no id).....id7 (menu3 handle)
........................id8 (menu3 handle)

[Igor Vartanov]

You are talking about sub menu id?

I'm talking about the concept in whole. Somehow you got fond of idea of back tracing a menu's item parent, a way you wasn't able to find in WinAPI, and I'm not aware of one either. My suggestion still remains: deal with unique menu ids. And it's up to you whether you follow it.

[Arjay]

But when message comes containing id we must find to what parent menu does this id belongs.

As Igor mentioned, you don't need to try to approach it this way.

As you have found out, the WinApi doesn't provide a way to get parent menu id's. So the parent menu idea isn't going to work.

What you have to do is give each menu item a unique id. You are close with the answer of storing a mapping in an array, but you'll need to forget storing the menu handle.

All you need to do is when you generate the hierarchy (and generate the unique menu id), store additional info with regard to it's hierarchy).

Create a class that stores the hierarchy info and then use a map to map it to the id.

Something like (pseudo code)

class MenuItem
{
  // ctor omitted
  string hierarchy;
  int id;
}

// dynamically generate id (and hierarchy)
MenuItem item(_T("topmenu\submenu1\submenu2"), id);

m_MenuMap.Add( currentId, item );

Now to use it..

void OnMenuClicked(  ..., int Id )
{
  // use the map to retrieve the additional info for the menu id
  MenuItem item = m_MenuMap[ id ];
}

Keep in mind that the code above is pseudo code and I don't suggest you use a string to track the menu hierarchy. It's merely done that way to show you that you can create unique menu id's and map them to any additional data (hierarchy) that you need.