Question

I need to develop a Winforms application where users are given permissions to access menu-items in a menu-strip as assigned to them.

I have anticipated the following technique:

(1) Menu Strip is mapped into a corresponding treeView with checkBoxes,

(2) A user is selected from the combo-box,

(3) Some tree-view-node check-boxes are checked in treeView to indicate that, “this user would be able to access these menu-items”,

(3) A save button is pressed to save the checked tree-Nodes and the user in the DB.

At later stages, when a user logs into the system, Menu-Strip items are populated accordingly from the DB.

Can anyone suggest me any better technique?

Answer 1

We have a similar implementation at work. This is a pretty straightforward design and works well.

You may want to add a unique identifier to each MenuItem. This can be as simple as:

public enum MenuItems
{
    File_New = 100,
    File_Save = 110,
    // ...
} 

And you include this number in the database. Then, when you write out the menu items, you can have a dictionary that maps the MenuItems integer to a delegate (for handling the execute event):

delegate void MenuItemExecuteHandler();
IDictionary<int, MenuItemExecuteHandler> MenuItemHandlers;

And somewhere define the mappings:

MenuItemHandlers.Add(MenuItems.File_New, this.OnFileNewClick());

So that when you hookup the menu item event handlers, you can call the right method to perform the right action:

int id = 100; // Retrieved from the database.
MenuItems menuItem = (MenuItems)Enum.TryParse(typeof(MenuItems), id);
string command = "..."; // Retrieved from the database using the MenuItem ID.
MenuItemControl control = new MenuItemControl();
control.Text = command;
control.OnClick += new EventHandler(delegate (object sender, EventArgs args) 
{ 
    MenuItemHandlers[menuItem].Invoke(); 
});

(Something to that effect, I probably have the syntax off slightly)

Update:

The “Tag” property of the tree-view item control gets populated like this, following the example above:

TreeItemControl control = new TreeItemControl();
control.Text = "New File"; // Retrieved from database.
control.Tag = 100; // Retrieved from database.

Then, when looking for what to write out:

if (control.CheckState = CheckState.Checked)
{
   row["MenuItemID"] = control.Tag;
   row["Allowed"] = true;
}