Allocating+item+IDs+automatically

//by Michael Hutton, June 2010; amended by Richard Russell//

Whenever menu items are created (and this also applies to controls within a dialog box for example) you must assign each of them a unique ID. For example: code format="bb4w" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, 0, 100, "Menu Item&1" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, 0, 101, "Menu Item&2" code Later in your program you will probably need to know the ID numbers of the menu items, for instance in a routine that responds to WM_COMMAND messages. It can be tedious and confusing to use a numeric value in this situation, and if you want to expand the menu things can get worse when the numbers are not in a logical order.

The traditional solution to this is to use named constants rather than numeric values, for example: code format="bb4w" MENUITEM1 = 100 MENUITEM2 = 101 SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, 0, MENUITEM1, "Menu Item&1" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, 0, MENUITEM2, "Menu Item&2" code So long as the names of the constants are related to the functions of the menu items they will be easily remembered, and you can add extra items in any position without concern for the numeric sequence.

However if you have a large menu with many items, or a dialogue box with many controls, it may be helpful to automate the process of allocating ID values to each item/control. One way in which this may be done is to create a structure to store all the IDs for you and then use a 'trick' to automatically assign values to the structure elements.

To do this first create a structure, we will call it MENUID{}, although you can call it anything you want. It is important to make sure that every member is an integer (% suffix): code format="bb4w" DIM MENUID{                    \ \          First{              \ \                FirstItem%,   \ \                SecondItem%,  \ \                ThirdItem% }, \ \          Second{             \ \                FirstItem%,   \ \                SecondItem%,  \ \                ThirdItem% }, \ \          Third{              \ \                FirstItem%,   \ \                SecondItem%,  \ \                ThirdItem% } } code Now, we use a few lines of code to iterate through the structure and assign a unique value to each member, in this case starting at 100: code format="bb4w" FOR I% = 0 TO DIM(MENUID{})-4 STEP 4 !(MENUID{}+I%) = 100 + I%/4 NEXT code Now we create our 'popup' menus and the main menu.. code format="bb4w" MF_POPUP = &10 WM_COMMAND = &111

SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO first% SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, MENUID.First.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, MENUID.First.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, MENUID.First.ThirdItem%, "&Third"

SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO second% SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, MENUID.Second.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, MENUID.Second.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, MENUID.Second.ThirdItem%, "&Third"

SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO third% SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, MENUID.Third.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, MENUID.Third.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, MENUID.Third.ThirdItem%, "&Third"

SYS "CreateMenu" TO hmenu% SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, first%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, second%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, third%, "&Third" SYS "SetMenu", @hwnd%, hmenu% SYS "DrawMenuBar", @hwnd% VDU 26 code And next we add our ON SYS handler and our main program loop: code format="bb4w" DIM Click%(2), click%(2) ON SYS Click% = @msg%, @wparam%, @lparam% : RETURN REPEAT click% = 0 SWAP Click%, click% CASE click%(1) AND &FFFF OF         WHEN MENUID.First.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.First.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.First.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.First.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.First.ThirdItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.First.ThirdItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.Second.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.Second.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.Second.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.Second.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.Second.ThirdItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.Second.ThirdItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.Third.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.Third.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN MENUID.Third.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(MENUID.Third.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 ENDCASE WAIT 1 UNTIL FALSE code You can now easily add menus or menu items by just adding to the MENUID structure. You could also add item IDs of any Dialog boxes you want. Here is an example program you can copy and paste into a BB4W IDE:  code format="bb4w" REM Install our libraries INSTALL @lib$+"WINLIB2" REM Create our ID structure DIM ID{               \ \    First{               \ \          FirstItem%,    \ \          SecondItem%,   \ \          ThirdItem% },  \ \    Second{              \ \          FirstItem%,    \ \          SecondItem%,   \ \          ThirdItem% },  \ \    Third{               \ \          FirstItem%,    \ \          SecondItem%,   \ \          Square% },     \ \    Square{              \ \          Static1%,      \ \          Static2%,      \ \          InputEditbox%, \ \          OutputEditbox%,\ \          CalcButton%,   \ \          CloseButton% } } REM Assign ID numbers to the elements FOR I% = 0 TO DIM(ID{})-4 STEP 4 !(ID{}+I%) = 100 + I%/4 NEXT REM Define some Windows constants REM!WC BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON = &1 ES_READONLY = &800 ES_NUMBER = &2000 WM_COMMAND = &111 MF_POPUP = &10 REM Create our menus SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO first% SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, ID.First.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, ID.First.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", first%, 0, ID.First.ThirdItem%, "&Third" SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO second% SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, ID.Second.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, ID.Second.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", second%, 0, ID.Second.ThirdItem%, "&Third" SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO third% SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, ID.Third.FirstItem%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, ID.Third.SecondItem%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", third%, 0, ID.Third.Square%, "S&quare a Number" SYS "CreateMenu" TO hmenu% SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, first%, "&First" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, second%, "&Second" SYS "AppendMenu", hmenu%, MF_POPUP, third%, "&Third" SYS "SetMenu", @hwnd%, hmenu% SYS "DrawMenuBar", @hwnd% VDU 26 REM Create a dialog box SquareDlg% = FN_newdialog("Square a number", 92, 61, 160, 80, 8, 1000) PROC_static(SquareDlg%, "Enter a number :", ID.Square.Static1%, \     \                       8, 8, 64, 16, 0) PROC_static(SquareDlg%, "Your number squared is:", ID.Square.Static2%, \     \                       8, 29, 64, 16, 0) PROC_editbox(SquareDlg%, "", ID.Square.InputEditbox%, \     \                        65, 7, 64, 14, ES_NUMBER) PROC_editbox(SquareDlg%, "", ID.Square.OutputEditbox%, \     \                        65, 30, 64, 14, ES_READONLY) PROC_pushbutton(SquareDlg%, "Calculate", ID.Square.CalcButton%, \     \                           12, 60, 56, 14, BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON) PROC_pushbutton(SquareDlg%, "Close", ID.Square.CloseButton%, \     \                           92, 60, 56, 14, 0) DIM Click%(2), click%(2) ON SYS Click% = @msg%, @wparam%, @lparam% : RETURN REPEAT click% = 0 SWAP Click%, click% CASE click%(1) AND &FFFF OF         WHEN ID.First.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.First.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.First.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.First.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.First.ThirdItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.First.ThirdItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Second.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.Second.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Second.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.Second.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Second.ThirdItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.Second.ThirdItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Third.FirstItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.Third.FirstItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Third.SecondItem%: SYS "MessageBox", @hwnd%, STR$(ID.Third.SecondItem%), "Menu ID", 0 WHEN ID.Third.Square%: PROC_showdialog(SquareDlg%) WHEN ID.Square.CalcButton% SYS "GetDlgItemInt", !SquareDlg%, ID.Square.InputEditbox% TO num% SYS "SetDlgItemInt", !SquareDlg%, ID.Square.OutputEditbox%, num%^2, 1 WHEN ID.Square.CloseButton% PROC_closedialog(SquareDlg%) ENDCASE WAIT 1 UNTIL FALSE END code