Dynamic menu items in Eclipse

First you have to add the menu contribution to your plugin.xml. I wanted to add an extra menu item to the project explorer so I used"popup:org.eclipse.ui.navigator.ProjectExplorer#PopupMenu?after=additions" as locationURI. Next you only have to specify a class that will create the menu item and specify an id.

 

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.menus">
  <menuContribution locationURI="popup:org.eclipse.ui.navigator.ProjectExplorer#PopupMenu?after=additions">
    <dynamic
              class="com.sigasi.MydynamicMenu"
              id="com.sigasi.myDynamicMenu">
    </dynamic>
  </menuContribution>
</extension>

 

Next you have to create the Java class that extends org.eclipse.jface.action.ContributionItem (You can use autocomplete for this).

The method that you have to override for a dynamic menu is fill(Menu menu, int index).
In this method you have to create the new (dynamic) MenuItem. You can also simply return if (e.g. based on the selection) you do not want to show a menu item. In the example code below I simply display the current date in the dynamic menu item.

Do not forget to add a addSelectionListener to the MenuItem, to start some action when the menu is selected.

That's it.

The complete java source:

package com.sigasi;
 
import java.util.Date;
 
import org.eclipse.jface.action.ContributionItem;
import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.SelectionAdapter;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.SelectionEvent;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Menu;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.MenuItem;
 
public class MyDynamicMenu extends ContributionItem {
 
	public MyDynamicMenu() {
	}
 
	public MyDynamicMenu(String id) {
		super(id);
	}
 
	@Override
	public void fill(Menu menu, int index) {
		    MenuItem menuItem = new MenuItem(menu, SWT.CASCADE);
		menuItem.setText("HiBuild");
		Menu submenu = new Menu(menu.getShell(),SWT.DROP_DOWN);
		menuItem.setMenu(submenu);
		MenuItem menuItem1 = new MenuItem(submenu,SWT.NONE);
		menuItem1.setText("HiBuild 1");
		
		MenuItem menuItem2 = new MenuItem(submenu, SWT.NONE);
		menuItem2.setText("HiBuild 2");
		
		menuItem1.addSelectionListener(new SelectionAdapter() {
			public void widgetSelected(SelectionEvent e) {
				//what to do when menu is subsequently selected.
				System.err.println("Dynamic menu selected 1");
			}
		});
 
		//create the menu item
		MenuItem menuItem = new MenuItem(menu, SWT.CHECK, index);
		menuItem.setText("My menu item (" + new Date() + ")");
		menuItem.addSelectionListener(new SelectionAdapter() {
			public void widgetSelected(SelectionEvent e) {
				//what to do when menu is subsequently selected.
				System.err.println("Dynamic menu selected");
			}
		});
	}
}