I’m glad you like the demo.
(And btw it’s not a dumb question at all)

I modified the sample from this post to include some code that gets a handle to a MenuItem that corresponds to a given data item. Once you have a handle to the MenuItem, you can modify any of its properties or add any event handlers you want. Here is the interesting part of the code:

Source source = this.Resources["src"] as Source;
Animal spider = source.AnimalCollection[0] as Animal;
MenuItem menuItem = myMenu.Items[0] as MenuItem;
menuItem.IsSubmenuOpen = true;
MenuItem spiderMenu = menuItem.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromItem(spider) as MenuItem;

I uploaded a project with this code here.

If you want to set properties at the time the MenuItem is created, your best option is to use a Style with a Setter. And if you want to attach an event, you can use a Style with an EventSetter.

Let me know if this answers your question.

And thanks for reading my blog!

Bea

First I love this demo!

Now, sorry to ask a dumb question.

Using your example, how would get access to the MenuItem as it’s being created so that you could add InputGestureText or possibly add an event handler?

I understand that the DataContect of the automatically created MenuItem is the Animal class, but I was hoping to have some more control over the MenuItem that gets created.

Thank you!

Karl

Yes, that is a good observation. The ObservableCollection does keep track of where the separators should go, apart from keeping track of the data itself. If this is a concern for your particular application, it wouldn’t be hard to split this knowledge into a two-tier data source. One class would only have the information about the data, and the other would store the locations of where to insert the separators.

Bea

It is interesting to note that this solution requires the bound observable collection to depart from a pure ‘business layer structure’, given the explicit presence of a ’separator’ object within the collection.

With kind regards,

Marc