Getting a menu bar to work in JUCE

[hhhaaa]

Hey guys, JUCE noob here. I am working on a standalone application. but after 3 days I am still not able to get the basic menu bar to work. I’ve read the MenusDemo and other things from forums which did not help me, I need to get a menu bar up and working, i.e the menu names should be visible, and there should be a pop-up when pressed n one of them, a list should be shown whose items on pressed should call a function.This is the code i have still now, which is only creating a small slit at the top for menu(probably because of the Component class) but nothing related to menus is being shown, any help would be really appreciated :

MenuComponent.h

#pragma once

#include <JuceHeader.h>

class MenuComponent :   public juce::MenuBarModel,
                        public juce::Component {
public:

    MenuComponent();
    ~MenuComponent() override;

    juce::StringArray getMenuBarNames() override;
    juce::PopupMenu getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) override;
    void menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) override;

    void paint(juce::Graphics& g) override;
    void resized() override;

private:
    JUCE_DECLARE_NON_COPYABLE_WITH_LEAK_DETECTOR (MenuComponent)
};

MenuComponent.cpp :

#include "MenuComponent.h"

MenuComponent::MenuComponent() {
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
    setVisible(true);
}

MenuComponent::~MenuComponent() {}

void MenuComponent::paint(juce::Graphics& g) {
    g.fillAll(juce::Colours::white);

    g.setFont (juce::Font (16.0f));
    g.setColour (juce::Colours::black);

}

void MenuComponent::resized() {
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
}

juce::StringArray MenuComponent::getMenuBarNames() {
    return {"Instrument", "Settings", "Edit"};
}

juce::PopupMenu MenuComponent::getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) {
    juce::PopupMenu menu;

    if (menuName == "Instrument") {
        menu.addItem(1, "Initialize");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(2, "Load Instrument");
        menu.addItem(3, "Save Instrument");
        menu.addItem(4, "Save Instrument as");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(5, "Exit");
    } else if (menuName == "Settings") {
        menu.addItem(15, "Theme");
        menu.addItem(16, "Scale+");
        menu.addItem(17, "Scale-");
    } else if (menuName == "Edit") {
        menu.addItem(21, "undo");
    }

    return menu;
}

void MenuComponent::menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) {
    switch (menuItemID) {
        case 1:
            std::cout << "Initialize selected";
            break;
        case 5:
            std::cout << "Exit selected";
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

MainComponent.cpp :

#include "MainComponent.h"
#include "MenuComponent.h"
#include <memory.h>

MainComponent::MainComponent() {
    setSize (1200, 800);

    this->menuBarComponent = std::make_unique<MenuComponent>();
    addChildComponent(this->menuBarComponent.get());
}


void MainComponent::paint (juce::Graphics& g) {
    g.fillAll (juce::Colours::brown);

    g.setFont (juce::Font (16.0f));
    g.setColour (juce::Colours::blanchedalmond);
}

void MainComponent::resized() {}

The Main.cpp is exactly left as how it is created for juce GUI, from projuicer.
I am using JUCE version 7.0.9 on linuxmint(Cinnamon)

[nicolasdanet]

Menu bar and command manager are a bit hard to understand at first (and even later). There’s toy projects i did to illustrate some old crashes there < GitHub - nicolasdanet/Dummy: ... > ; IIRC MenuCrash / PopupCrash examples could help you.

[hhhaaa]

thanks for the reply, checking the code out now. but can you tell me what is the advantage of using a command manager over a menu bar model, do we need to implement both of them to make the menu bar work? and also how to setModel()? I am not able to get it to show the menu.

[nicolasdanet]

The command manager is required to handle properly keyboard shortcuts.

[hhhaaa]

oh, thanks. i’ve tried out the examples from you repo(MenuCrash). changed my code to this :
MenuComponent.h :

#pragma once

#include <JuceHeader.h>

class MenuComponent :   public juce::MenuBarComponent,
                        public juce::MenuBarModel
{
public:
    //========================================
    MenuComponent();
    ~MenuComponent() override;
    //========================================
    void paint(juce::Graphics& g) override;
    void resized() override;
    //========================================
    juce::StringArray getMenuBarNames() override;
    juce::PopupMenu getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) override;
    void menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) override;

private:
    std::unique_ptr<juce::MenuBarComponent> menuComp;

    JUCE_DECLARE_NON_COPYABLE_WITH_LEAK_DETECTOR (MenuComponent)
};

MenuComponent.cpp :

#include "MenuComponent.h"

MenuComponent::MenuComponent() {
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);

    menuComp.reset(new juce::MenuBarComponent(this));
    addAndMakeVisible(menuComp.get());
    menuComp.get()->setModel(this);

    setVisible(true);
}

MenuComponent::~MenuComponent() {}

void MenuComponent::paint(juce::Graphics& g) {
    g.fillAll(juce::Colours::white);

    g.setFont (juce::Font (16.0f));
    g.setColour (juce::Colours::black);
}

void MenuComponent::resized() {
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
    menuComp.get()->setBounds(0, 0, 100, 100);
}

juce::StringArray MenuComponent::getMenuBarNames() {
    return {"Instrument", "Settings", "Edit"};
}

juce::PopupMenu MenuComponent::getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) {
    juce::PopupMenu menu;

    if (menuName == "Instrument") {
        menu.addItem(1, "Initialize");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(2, "Load Instrument");
        menu.addItem(3, "Save Instrument");
        menu.addItem(4, "Save Instrument as");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(5, "Exit");
    } else if (menuName == "Settings") {
        menu.addItem(15, "Theme");
        menu.addItem(16, "Scale+");
        menu.addItem(17, "Scale-");
    } else if (menuName == "Edit") {
        menu.addItem(21, "undo");
    }

    return menu;
}

void MenuComponent::menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) {
    switch (menuItemID) {
        case 1:
            std::cout << "Initialize selected";
            break;
        case 5:
            std::cout << "Exit selected";
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

this is crashing before launching the GUI, at this line : menuComp.get()->setBounds(0, 0, 100, 100); i’ve tried using without the .get() but it is still crashing(segmentation fault). without the line it looks exactly like it was in the beginning. thanks for the help but nothing changed.

[zsliu98]

When you init MenuComponent, setSize() will call resized() and then call menuComp.get()->setBounds() before you actually init menuComp.

By the way, I would recommend declaring juce::MenuBarCompoent as a class member instead of using the smart pointer.

[hhhaaa]

I’ve tried to make it a single class again, setting the model to this, and setting the size in the resized method. as far as i understand resized() will be called even when creating the application for the first time, so we do not need to have a setSize in the init, but any kind of call to setBounds is crashing by a segmentation fault, I’ve printed out the pointer to the getModel() to make sure it is not null. I do not get it am i doing something inherently wrong? all i see is this :

My code : MenuComponent.h :

#pragma once

#include <JuceHeader.h>

class MenuComponent :   public juce::MenuBarComponent,
                        public juce::MenuBarModel
{
public:
    //========================================
    MenuComponent();
    ~MenuComponent() override;
    //========================================
    void paint(juce::Graphics& g) override;
    void resized() override;
    //========================================
    juce::StringArray getMenuBarNames() override;
    juce::PopupMenu getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) override;
    void menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) override;

private:
    JUCE_DECLARE_NON_COPYABLE_WITH_LEAK_DETECTOR (MenuComponent)
};

MainComponent.cpp :

#include "MenuComponent.h"

MenuComponent::MenuComponent() {
    setModel(this);
}

MenuComponent::~MenuComponent() {}

void MenuComponent::paint(juce::Graphics& g) {
    g.fillAll(juce::Colours::white);

    g.setFont (juce::Font (16.0f));
    g.setColour (juce::Colours::black);
}

void MenuComponent::resized() {
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
}

juce::StringArray MenuComponent::getMenuBarNames() {
    return {"Instrument", "Settings", "Edit"};
}

juce::PopupMenu MenuComponent::getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) {
    juce::PopupMenu menu;

    if (menuName == "Instrument") {
        menu.addItem(1, "Initialize");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(2, "Load Instrument");
        menu.addItem(3, "Save Instrument");
        menu.addItem(4, "Save Instrument as");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(5, "Exit");
    } else if (menuName == "Settings") {
        menu.addItem(15, "Theme");
        menu.addItem(16, "Scale+");
        menu.addItem(17, "Scale-");
    } else if (menuName == "Edit") {
        menu.addItem(21, "undo");
    }

    return menu;
}

void MenuComponent::menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) {
    switch (menuItemID) {
        case 1:
            std::cout << "Initialize selected";
            break;
        case 5:
            std::cout << "Exit selected";
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

[stephenk]

The whole Menubar/CommandManager thing is very hard to set up. Here is a link to another post that has some downloadable examples of how to do it:

Any one has a working example of menu bar?

modified and tried the “given” example Are you referring to the Menus Demo in the DemoRunner? I think I got my menubars in my app, and my plugin, working by examining this and incorporating examples from it. But if I recall, I also looked at the Projucer source code extensively for how to get it all working. That’s a great place to look. There are a lot of inter-related pieces to the puzzle. It’s really quite complicated, with the ApplicationCommandTargets, MenuBarModels, etc. More so than…

[hhhaaa]

Thanks for the reply but I’ve already looked into it, the problem is I understand that this is complicated but what am I not doing?

• Implemented the virtual functions.
• setModel to this to say the MenuBarModel is the same class.
• setSize for the display when resized.

I’ve tried to create an MenuBarComponent as a class variable and tried adding to this class, it resulted in an assertion failing for adding the same class to the class as a child, but yet most people’s code I see has something like adding this as a child. how is this feasible?

[hhhaaa]

I think I got it, still do not know exactly what I am doing. will post the solution as I understand or get some clarity on it. Thank you everyone who replied.

[daniel]

You don’t need to implement a MenuBarComponent, that exists already.

The DocumentWindow and it’s descendants has a method setMenuBar(MenuBarModel, menuBarHeight).

[hhhaaa]

Final code that is working , I’ve commented how I think it works, feel free to correct me if i am wrong.

MenuComponent.h

#pragma once

#include <JuceHeader.h>

// We do not need to implement the `MenuBarComponent`,
// it is added as a class member.
class MenuComponent :   public juce::Component,
                        public juce::MenuBarModel
{
public:
    //========================================
    MenuComponent();
    ~MenuComponent() override;
    //========================================
    void paint(juce::Graphics& g) override;
    void resized() override;
    //========================================
    juce::StringArray getMenuBarNames() override;
    juce::PopupMenu getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) override;
    void menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) override;

private:
    std::unique_ptr<juce::MenuBarComponent> menuComponent;

    JUCE_DECLARE_NON_COPYABLE_WITH_LEAK_DETECTOR (MenuComponent)
};

MenuComponent.cpp

#include "MenuComponent.h"

MenuComponent::MenuComponent() {
    // `this` already implements the `MenuBarModel` so this is going to return a
    // `MenuBarComponent` with the Model already setup.
    menuComponent.reset(new juce::MenuBarComponent(this));
    // getting the new component to show up.
    addAndMakeVisible(menuComponent.get());
    resized(); // this is NEEDED for the first time rendering.
}

MenuComponent::~MenuComponent() {}

void MenuComponent::paint(juce::Graphics& g) {
    g.fillAll(juce::Colours::beige);

    g.setFont (juce::Font (20.0f));
    g.setColour (juce::Colours::black);
}

void MenuComponent::resized() {
    //setting the size of our normal component.
    setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
    // setting the size of the menuComponent inside this component.
    menuComponent.get()->setSize(getParentWidth(), 20);
}

juce::StringArray MenuComponent::getMenuBarNames() {
    return {"Instrument", "Settings", "Edit"};
}

juce::PopupMenu MenuComponent::getMenuForIndex(int topLevelMenuIndex, const juce::String& menuName) {
    juce::PopupMenu menu;

    if (menuName == "Instrument") {
        menu.addItem(1, "Initialize");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(2, "Load");
        menu.addItem(3, "Save");
        menu.addItem(4, "Save as");
        menu.addSeparator();
        menu.addItem(5, "Exit");
    } else if (menuName == "Settings") {
        menu.addItem(15, "Theme");
        menu.addItem(16, "Scale+");
        menu.addItem(17, "Scale-");
    } else if (menuName == "Edit") {
        menu.addItem(21, "undo");
    }

    return menu;
}

void MenuComponent::menuItemSelected(int menuItemID, int topLevelMenuIndex) {
    switch (menuItemID) {
        case 1:
            std::cout << "Initialize selected" << "\n";
            break;
        case 5:
            std::cout << "Exit selected";
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

@daniel This works for now, will change if needed. thanks for the reply.