WPF: How can you add a new menuitem to a menu at runtime?

Question

I have a simple WPF application with a menu. I need to add menu items dynamically at runtime. When I simply create a new menu item, and add it onto its parent MenuItem, it does not display in the menu, regardless of if UpdateLayout is called.

What must happen to allow a menu to have additional items dynamically added at runtime?

Note: the following code doesn't work.

            MenuItem mi = new MenuItem();             mi.Header = "Item to add";             mi.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;             //addTest is a menuitem that exists in the forms defined menu             addTest.Items.Add(mi);             addTest.UpdateLayout(); 

At the moment, the default menu items are defined in the xaml file. I want to add additional menu items onto this menu and its existing menu items. However, as stated, the above code does nothing.

Answer 1

//Add to main menu MenuItem newMenuItem1 = new MenuItem(); newMenuItem1.Header = "Test 123"; this.MainMenu.Items.Add(newMenuItem1);  //Add to a sub item MenuItem newMenuItem2 = new MenuItem(); MenuItem newExistMenuItem = (MenuItem)this.MainMenu.Items[0]; newMenuItem2.Header = "Test 456"; newExistMenuItem.Items.Add(newMenuItem2); 

Answer 2

I have successfully added menu items to a pre-defined menu item. In the following code, the LanguageMenu is defined in design view in th xaml, and then added the sub items in C#.

XAML:

<MenuItem Name="LanguageMenu" Header="_Language">   <MenuItem Header="English" IsCheckable="True" Click="File_Language_Click"/> </MenuItem> 

C#:

// Clear the existing item(s) (this will actually remove the "English" element defined in XAML) LanguageMenu.Items.Clear();   // Dynamically get flag images from a specified folder to use for definingthe menu items  string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(Settings.LanguagePath, "*.png"); foreach (string imagePath in files) {   // Create the new menu item   MenuItem item = new MenuItem();    // Set the text of the menu item to the name of the file (removing the path and extention)   item.Header = imagePath.Replace(Settings.LanguagePath, "").Replace(".png", "").Trim("\\".ToCharArray());   if (File.Exists(imagePath))   {     // Create image element to set as icon on the menu element     Image icon = new Image();     BitmapImage bmImage = new BitmapImage();     bmImage.BeginInit();     bmImage.UriSource = new Uri(imagePath, UriKind.Absolute);     bmImage.EndInit();     icon.Source = bmImage;     icon.MaxWidth = 25;     item.Icon = icon;   }    // Hook up the event handler (in this case the method File_Language_Click handles all these menu items)   item.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(File_Language_Click);     // Add menu item as child to pre-defined menu item   LanguageMenu.Items.Add(item); // Add menu item as child to pre-defined menu item }