Loop Through Menu Items in MDI Parent Form in WinForms

Question

I need a way to loop through the menu items in a MDI Parent Form .

The reason why is because I am setting the background of the buttons when they are activated to show the user which ones they have selected .

The pictures below illustrates an example of System Settings being selected in the menu and the child form shown on the right.

Currently I achieve this using direct code:

systemManagementToolStripMenuItem.BackColor = Color.Gray;

How can I loop through so that each time I click on a menu item it will change the background colour of the selected item.

Answer 1

Just collect the ToolStipMenuItems into a List and loop over the list whenever the user performs the action to initiate the looping.

// First create the list of menu items
int selectedMenuItem = 0;
List<ToolStripMenuItem> menuItems = new List<ToolStripMenuItem>();
menuItems.Add(systemManagementToolStripMenuItem);

// When the user performs some action, such as pressing down arrow
selectedMenuItem = (selectedMenuItem + 1) % menuItems.Count;
UpdateSelectedItems();

// Have some method to update the buttons
public void UpdateSelectedItems()
{
    foreach(var item in menuItems)
        item.BackColor = Color.DarkGray;
    menuItems[selectedMenuItem].BackColor = Color.Gray;
}