Blazor Context Menu Overview

The Blazor Context Menu displays a contextual popup with flat or hierarchical data in a traditional menu-like structure. The component enables you to invoke commands while preserving the screen real estate.

In addition to the built-in navigation capabilities, you can browse through the items and their children, define templates for the individual nodes, render text and icons or images, and respond to events.

Telerik UI for Blazor Ninja image

The Context Menu component is part of Telerik UI for Blazor, a professional grade UI library with 110+ native components for building modern and feature-rich applications. To try it out sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Creating the Blazor Context Menu

To create the Context Menu:

  1. Add the TelerikContextMenu tag and set its Selector parameter to a CSS selector that will match the elements to which you want to attach the Context Menu.
  2. Provide a collection of models to the Data property of the component. The Context Menu will automatically recognize property names like Id, ParentId, Text, and more. Otherwise, configure custom property names by using bindings.
  3. Handle the OnClick event to respond to user actions.

A basic Context Menu with hierarchical data binding and an OnClick event handler

@* Use a Context Menu to perform actions *@

<div class="context-menu-target" style="width:200px; height: 100px; background: yellow; margin-bottom: 50px;">
    Right-click (or tap and hold on a touch device) for a Context Menu.
</div>

<TelerikContextMenu Selector=".context-menu-target" Data="@MenuItems"                       
                    OnClick="@( (ContextMenuItem itm) => ClickHandler(itm) )">
</TelerikContextMenu>

@code {
    public List<ContextMenuItem> MenuItems { get; set; }

    async Task ClickHandler(ContextMenuItem clickedItem)
    {
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(clickedItem.CommandName))
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"The programm will now perform the {clickedItem.CommandName} operation");
        }
    }

    protected override void OnInitialized()
    {

        MenuItems = new List<ContextMenuItem>()
        {
            new ContextMenuItem
            {
                Text = "More Info",
                Icon = SvgIcon.InfoCircle,
                CommandName = "info"
            },
            new ContextMenuItem
            {
                Separator = true
            },
            new ContextMenuItem
            {
                Text = "Advanced",
                Items = new List<ContextMenuItem>()
                {
                    new ContextMenuItem
                    {
                        Text = "Delete",
                        Icon = SvgIcon.Trash,
                        CommandName = "delete"
                    },
                    new ContextMenuItem
                    {
                        Text = "Report",
                        Icon = SvgIcon.Cancel,
                        CommandName = "report"
                    }
                }
            }
        };

        base.OnInitialized();
    }

    public class ContextMenuItem
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }
        public string CommandName { get; set; }
        public ISvgIcon Icon { get; set; }
        public bool Separator { get; set; }
        public List<ContextMenuItem> Items { get; set; }
    }
}

Data Binding

To show any items, the Blazor Context Menu requires a data source that you can provide through the Data property. The Context Menu allows you to display the items both as flat data and hierarchically. Read more about the Blazor Context Menu data binding...

Per-Target Customization

You can easily attach one and the same Context Menu to many targets or you can use its ShowAsync(x, y) method to show the component explicitly based on your business logic needs, data, and events. Read more about the integration approaches of the Blazor Context Menu....

A Context Menu is often used to list pages, views, or sections in an application so that users can navigate through them. To achieve the desired scenario, use either of the following options:

  • If a URL is provided for the given item, populate the URLs in the anchors which the Context Menu will generate by using the built-in UrlField in the bound data, as demonstrated in the first example of this article.
  • Enable fine-tuning and generate the desired links, such as NavLink components, by using a template.

Read more about the Blazor Context Menu navigation...

Icons

To illustrate the purpose of each Context Menu item, the Blazor Context Menu allows you to add images, icon classes, or font icons. Read more about the Blazor Menu icons...

Templates

You can use the functionality of the built-in templates and customize what is rendered in the items. Read more about the available Blazor Context Menu templates...

Events

The Context Menu generates events that you can handle and further customize its behavior. Read more about the supported Blazor Context Menu events...

Context Menu Parameters

The following table lists Context Menu parameters, which are not related to other features on this page. For the full list of properties, methods, and events, see the Context Menu API reference documentation.

Attribute Type and Default Value Description
Class string Renders an additional CSS class to the main wrapping element of the component. Use it to apply custom styles or override the theme.
Selector string A CSS selector of the target elements where the Context Menu will be shown.

The popup of the component can be additionally customized via nested tags:

<TelerikContextMenu>
    <ContextMenuSettings>
        <ContextMenuPopupSettings HorizontalCollision="..."/>
    </ContextMenuSettings>
</TelerikContextMenu>

The ContextMenu provides the following popup settings:

Parameter Type Description
HorizontalCollision PopupCollision enum
(Fit)
Sets the behavior of the Popup when it doesn't fit in the viewport based on the horizontal plane. Read more about Popup collision behavior.
VerticalCollision PopupCollision enum
(Fit)
Defines the behavior of the Popup when it doesn't fit in the viewport based on the vertical plane. Read more about Popup collision behavior.

Context Menu Reference and Methods

To use the Blazor Context Menu methods, add a reference to the component instance.

Method Description
ShowAsync Programmatically shows the Context Menu.
HideAsync Programmatically hides the Context Menu.
Refresh Re-renders the component.
@* Open, close, and refresh the Context Menu programmatically *@

<div @oncontextmenu:preventDefault="true"
     @oncontextmenu="@( (MouseEventArgs e) => ShowContextMenu(e, false) )"
     class="menuTarget">
    normal target
</div>

<TelerikContextMenu Data="@MenuItems" @ref="@TheContextMenu">
    <Template>
        @{
            var dataSource = context as List<ContextMenuItem>;
            <p>We have this data:</p>
            <ul>
                @foreach (var item in dataSource)
                {
                    <li>@item.Text</li>
                }
            </ul>
        }
        <TelerikTextBox @bind-Value="@TextBoxValue" />
        <br />
        <TelerikButton OnClick="@HandleTextBoxReset">Reset textbox</TelerikButton>
        <TelerikButton OnClick="@(async () => await TheContextMenu.HideAsync())">Close</TelerikButton>
    </Template>
</TelerikContextMenu>

@code {
    public List<ContextMenuItem> MenuItems { get; set; }
    public string TextBoxValue { get; set; }

    // The Context Menu is a generic component and its type depends on the model to which it binds.
    TelerikContextMenu<ContextMenuItem> TheContextMenu { get; set; }

    void HandleTextBoxReset()
    {
        TextBoxValue = "";
        TheContextMenu.Refresh();
    }

    async Task ShowContextMenu(MouseEventArgs e, bool IsSpecial)
    {
        await TheContextMenu.ShowAsync(e.ClientX, e.ClientY);
    }

    // Generate sample data for the ListView and the Context Menu.
    protected override void OnInitialized()
    {
        MenuItems = new List<ContextMenuItem>()
    {
            new ContextMenuItem
            {
                Text = "More Info",
                Metadata = "info"
            },
            new ContextMenuItem
            {
                Text = "Special Command",
                Metadata = "special"
            }
        };

        base.OnInitialized();
    }

    public class ContextMenuItem
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }
        public string Metadata { get; set; }
    }
}

<style>
    .menuTarget {
        width: 100px;
        background: yellow;
        margin: 50px;
    }
</style>

Next Steps

See Also

In this article