WPF Context Menus

I was recently asked how to associate a context menu with a control in WPF. This was such a trivial request that I knocked together my favourite sample app with a context menu in it.

<Window
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2006"
  xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
  mc:Ignorable="d"
  x:Class="ListViewContextSample.Window1"
  x:Name="Window"
  Title="Window1"
  Width="640" Height="480">
  <Window.Resources>
    <XmlDataProvider x:Key="WPFRSSFeed" d:IsDataSource="True"         
        Source="http://www.codeproject.com/WebServices/MessageRSS.aspx?fid=1004114"/>
    <DataTemplate x:Key="itemTemplate">
      <StackPanel>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=title}"/>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=description}"/>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=link}"/>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=author}"/>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=pubDate}"/>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Mode=OneWay, XPath=subject}"/>
      </StackPanel>
    </DataTemplate>
  </Window.Resources>
  <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    <ScrollViewer IsTabStop="True" >
      <ItemsControl ItemTemplate="{DynamicResource itemTemplate}"
         ItemsSource="{Binding Mode=Default, Source={StaticResource WPFRSSFeed},
         XPath=/rss/channel/item}">
        <ItemsControl.ContextMenu>
          <ContextMenu Name="MyContextMenu">
            <MenuItem Header="This is my menu" />
          </ContextMenu>
        </ItemsControl.ContextMenu>
      </ItemsControl>
    </ScrollViewer>
  </StackPanel>
</Window>

As you can see, we have a simple RSS reader associated with a context menu. Now, I chose to explicitly create this menu in the ItemsControl.ContextMenu because we only need to use it once.

The same person then stated that what they actually wanted was to associate a context menu with an item in a ListBox, but not the listbox itself. This was just too good an opportunity to pass up to demonstrate how powerful WPF really is. In the following sample, I’ve created a context menu as a resource which is associated with an item in the listbox. Because the ListBoxItem content is exposed for you to manipulate, I’ve associate the context menu with a TextBlock. I could have associated it with the ListBoxItem itself, but I wanted to demonstrate that you can put different types of items in the Content here (you could put an image in if you wanted, for instance).

<Window
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2006"
  xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
  mc:Ignorable="d"
  x:Class="ListViewContextSample.Window1"
  x:Name="Window"
  Title="Window1"
  Width="640" Height="480">
    <Window.Resources>
        <ContextMenu x:Key="MyMenu">
            <MenuItem Header="Send" />
        </ContextMenu>
    </Window.Resources>
    <Grid>
        <ListBox Height="70" VerticalAlignment="Top">
            <ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem.Content>
                    <TextBlock Text="My Listbox item" ContextMenu="{StaticResource MyMenu}" />     
                </ListBoxItem.Content>
            </ListBoxItem>
        </ListBox>
    </Grid>
</Window>

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