How to Use Context Menus in a

Web Dynpro for Java Application

Applies to:
Web Dynpro for Java 7.11. For more information, visit the Web Dynpro Java homepage.

Summary
This tutorial explains the Web Dynpro context menu programming model and demonstrates how to
implement context menus in a file explorer application.
Author(s): Web Dynpro Java Team
Company: SAP AG
Created on: 29 June 2010

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Prerequisites ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Systems, Installed Applications, and Authorizations ................................................................................... 4
Objectives ..................................................................................................................................................... 4
The Tutorial Scenario: A File Browser ........................................................................................................... 4
Column Display Context Menu ................................................................................................................... 5
Navigation and Sorting Context Menu ........................................................................................................ 6
File-Specific Context Menu ........................................................................................................................ 6
Assigning Context Menus to Screen Areas .................................................................................................... 7
Creating Context Menus and Assigning Actions........................................................................................... 10
Modifying Context Menus at Runtime .......................................................................................................... 15
Tutorial Result ............................................................................................................................................. 17
Text Symbols........................................................................................................................................... 18
Copyright .................................................................................................................................................... 19

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Introduction
In this tutorial you will learn how to implement context menus in a Web Dynpro application. This wil include
learning how to create context menus in the View Designer and how to assign them to areas of your screen.
You will also learn how to use the view controller method wdOnContextMenu to create and modify context
menu entries programmatically.

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Prerequisites

Systems, Installed Applications, and Authorizations

You need the NetWeaver Developer Studio (Version 7.11 or later) to compile and deploy the tutorial
application. The application server used should have the same version as the NWDS or a newer version.
The tutorial application is available as a development component (DC). You need to import the software
component HM-WDUIDMKTCNT, which contains the DC tc/wd/tut/menu/ctx. The exact steps are described
in a separate document.

Objectives
After working through this tutorial you should be able to:
 Understand the programming model for context menus in Web Dynpro
 Use the NWDS View Designer to create context menus and assign them to view areas
 Add code to the view controller hook method wdOnContextMenu() to create and modify context menu
entries.

The Tutorial Scenario: A File Browser

The tutorial implements a file system browser (on the server) that offers some of the context menus you
probably know from Windows Explorer.
When you start the tutorial application, a screen similar to the following one will appear:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Initially, the root directory of the server’s file system is displayed. Let’s have a look at the context menus
available in this application.

Column Display Context Menu

Using the right mouse button, click on any of the table column headers. A context menu for showing/hiding
the columns appears. (There is no menu entry for the “Name” column because this column is always
visible.):

Check/uncheck the entries in the context menu and note the changes in the table.

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Navigation and Sorting Context Menu

Do a right-click anywhere inside the table except over the file or directory names. A context menu with
entries for sorting the table and navigating upwards in the file system appears:

The Up entry is disabled if the folder currently displayed has no parent folder.

File-Specific Context Menu

Do a right-click on a directory name or icon. A context menu with an entry for opening the directory appears:

When you select the menu entry, the files in the target directory are displayed in the table.
Navigate to any directory containing text files, for example, log files with the extension “.log” (for the exact list
of file types, see the standard expression PATTERN_TEXT_FILE in the view controller implementation).
Do a right-click on such a file. An additional context menu entry for opening a preview of the file appears:

When you select the Preview <filename> entry, a popup window is opened and the content of the file is
displayed.
Note that the context menu entry appears disabled for large files (more than 512 Kbytes):

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Assigning Context Menus to Screen Areas

The Web Dynpro context menu programming model provides a way to assign context menus to screen areas
efficiently. Every UI element that supports context menus has two properties: contextMenuId and
contextMenuBehaviour.
IMPORTANT:
In the 7.11 IDE, the contextMenuId and contextMenuBehaviour properties are only visible if Show
Advanced Properties is selected:

The contextMenuId property is used to assign a context menu to a UI element. The

contextMenuBehaviour property defines how a UI element behaves with respect to the context menu
defined by its parent in the UI element hierarchy.
The contextMenuBehaviour property can have the following values:
 INHERIT: the UI element inherits the context menu defined by its parent (or ancestor). This is also the
default value for that property, which has the effect that context menu definitions automatically propagate
downwards in the layout hierarchy.
 SUPPRESS: the UI element suppresses the context menu defined by its parent. The context menu is also
suppressed for the children of the UI element. Using SUPPRESS, an inherited context menu definition can
be suppressed for a complete sub-tree of the layout hierarchy.
 PROVIDE: the UI element provides the context menu given by the value of the contextMenuId
property. Comment [D1]: Vielleicht auch „or overwrites
parent’s behaviour“?
In our example application, we want to assign context menus to the different areas in the table as follows:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpr o for Java Application

ColumnDisplayMenu

Contains entries for showing

and hiding table columns.

DirectoryEntryMenu

Contains entries for

opening a directory and
for previewing a text file.

DirectoryMenu

Contains entries for navigating to the

parent directory and a sub-menu for
sorting the directory.

To define the context menu assignments correctly, it is important to understand the hierarchy of the Web
Dynpro layout for this screen:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

First, the “DirectoryMenu” context menu is assigned to the “DirectoryTable” UI element. The effect is that this
context menu appears everywhere inside the table (a consequence of the default value INHERIT for the
context menu behavior property).
We assign:
DirectoryTable => (PROVIDE, “DirectoryMenu”)
Next, we want the “ColumnDisplayMenu” context menu to appear above every column header. We define:
*Column => (PROVIDE, “ColumnDisplayMenu”)
As a result, this context menu appears inside the complete table header (not only on the column header
text).
The other consequence is that the “ColumnDisplayMenu” now also appears on the cell editors of the table
columns (but not in the free area inside the table body). To display the “DirectoryMenu” on the cell editors
instead, we define:
*Editor => (PROVIDE, “DirectoryMenu”)
For the editor of the Name column, we want the DirectoryEntryMenu to appear. Therefore, we define:
FileNameEditor => (PROVIDE, “DirectoryEntryMenu”)
This should give you the idea behind the properties contextMenuId and contextMenuBehaviour.
These assignments can also be done at runtime using the UI element API. We will not describe the creation
and assignment of context menus through the API in this tutorial. We will, however, describe how to modify
context menus defined and assigned at design-time using the runtime API.

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

It should now be clear how the definitions above are created using the View Designer. Note that you can
select multiple UI elements in the Outline view and set common property values for all of them in one go:

Creating Context Menus and Assigning Actions

Context menus are created in the View Designer in the same way as other view elements. The only
difference is that they are stored in a different collection inside their view.
This is important to know if you want to create context menus using the API. You must use the context
menu-specific API IWDContextMenuManager and the hook method wdOnContextMenu() to create
context menus. Do not use the IWDView API and hook method wdDoModifyView()!
Let us have a look at how the context menus defined above are created in the View Designer:
There is a node labeled “Context Menus” in the “Outline” view. Right-click this node to create and add
context menus:

A context menu created in this way is available in the drop-down list for setting the contextMenuId
property:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

You can also use the “Create” button shown above. In this case, a new context menu with a generic ID such
as “Context Menu1” is created (you should change the ID to something more appropriate afterwards.)
The creation of context menu items works exactly as for menus created in the view layout. The same set of
menu items (MenuActionItem, MenuCheckBox. MenuRadioButton, MenuSeparator, Menu) is
available for context menus as well:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Let’s have a look at the action for opening a directory. This action has to “know” from which table row it was
triggered (through the context menu above that row). Therefore, we add a parameter filesElement of type
IFilesElement to the action (IFilesElement is the runtime type of the elements of the table’s data
source node Files):

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

If you have mapped the context node from the component controller, make sure that you select the
IFilesElement type from the view controller here.
For the OpenDirectoryItem menu item we define an event parameter mapping from the (implicit)
nodeElement event parameter to the filesElement action parameter:

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

This parameter mapping has the effect that the action parameter “filesElement” will always contain the
context element that represents the table row above which the context menu has been opened. (You cannot
use the lead selection of the table because opening a context menu does not change the lead selection.) Comment [D2]: It is important. May bei t
makes sense to stress this point?

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Modifying Context Menus at Runtime

For (some types of) text files, an additional context menu for previewing the file appears:

You achieve this by adding the following code to the wdOnContextMenu() view controller method that is
called just before the context menu is opened:

public final void wdOnContextMenu

(
final com.sap.tc.webdynpro.clientserver.uielib.standard.api.IWDContextMenuManager
contextMenuManager,
final com.sap.tc.webdynpro.progmodel.api.IWDContextMenuEvent event
)
{
//@@begin wdOnContextMenu
IWDMenu dirEntryMenu = contextMenuManager.getContextMenu("DirectoryEntryMenu");
if (contextMenuManager.getCurrentContextMenu() == dirEntryMenu)
{
modifyDirEntryMenu(dirEntryMenu, contextMenuManager, (IFilesElement)
event.getNodeElement());
}
//@@end
}

The code first gets a runtime reference to the context menu “DirectoryEntryMenu” that has been defined at
design time. It then checks whether the current context menu request would open this context menu. If this is
the case, a method for modifying the context menu is called:

private void modifyDirEntryMenu(IWDMenu contextMenu, IWDContextMenuManager

contextMenuManager, IFilesElement e)
{
IWDMenuActionItem item = null;
if ("PreviewItem".equals(contextMenu.getItem(0).getId()))
{
item = (IWDMenuActionItem) contextMenu.getItem(0); // preview item already
exists
}
if (canPreview(e.getFile()))
{
if (item == null)
{
item = contextMenuManager.createActionItem("PreviewItem");
item.setOnAction(wdThis.wdGetPreviewFileAction());

item.mappingOfOnAction().addSourceMapping(IWDMenuActionItem.IWDOnAction.NODE_ELEMENT,
"row");
contextMenu.addItem(item, 0);
}
item.setVisible(true);

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

if (e.getFile().length() > MAX_LENGTH_FOR_PREVIEW)

{
item.setEnabled(false);
item.setText(tr(IMessageTutorial.CM_FILE_PREVIEW_DISABLED, e.getName()));
}
else
{
item.setEnabled(true);
item.setText(tr(IMessageTutorial.CM_FILE_PREVIEW, e.getName()));
}
}
else
{
if (item != null)
{
item.setVisible(false);
}
}
}

This method first checks whether the “Preview” menu entry has already been created and added to the
context menu. If the file that belongs to the table entry where the context menu has been opened can be
previewed, the menu entry is made visible (and created if it does not yet exist). If the file is too large to be
previewed, the menu entry is disabled and its text is changed.
Of course, it would have been simpler to just define the “Preview” entry already at design time and change its
properties using data binding, but we want to illustrate that you still have full control over the context menu
before it is opened.
You can also create or delete context menus from within this hook method using the
IWDContextMenuManager API.. This API also allows you to change the assignment of context menus
dynamically (see method setCurrentContextMenu()). This could be used to switch between a set of
context menus defined at design time (depending on some condition known only at runtime) or to suppress a
context menu at runtime (by setting the current context menu to null).
Finally let us have a look at the parameters of the predefined hook method wdOnContextMenu():
public final void wdOnContextMenu
(
final com.sap.tc.webdynpro.clientserver.uielib.standard.api.IWDContextMenuManager
contextMenuManager,
final com.sap.tc.webdynpro.progmodel.api.IWDContextMenuEvent event
)

The IWDContextMenuManager interface provides methods for

 Creating all different menu items described above
 Creating and deleting (?) context menus, also those defined at design time
 Accessing any existing context menu by its ID
 Accessing and changing the “current” context menu. This menu is computed by the framework from the
context menu assignments.
The IWDContextMenuEvent interface contains information about the current context menu request. The
event stores:
 The originator of the request, that is the UI element where the right-click or keyboard shortcut (for
example, Shift-F10) for opening the menu occurred.
 The provider of the context menu that will be opened. This is the UI element that provides the context
menu that will be opened.

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

 The context element that represents the item above which the context menu has been opened. This is
useful for all data-driven UI elements like tables and trees where the rows and nodes are defined by the
context elements of their data source node.

Tutorial Result
We have demonstrated how to define and assign context menus at design time and how to access a context
menu at runtime in the wdOnContextMenu()view controller method that is called just before the context
menu is opened. You have learned how to modify a context menu at runtime depending on certain conditions
about the object for which it has been opened.
The Web Dynpro programming model provides a declarative method for defining context menus and
assigning them to screen areas together with an API for creating, modifying, and assigning context menus at
runtime.

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

Text Symbols
Symbol Usage

Note

Recommendation

Warning

See also

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 How to Use Context Menus in a Web Dynpro for Java Application

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