11.6 Creating a Menu

A Frame can have a menu. To create a menu three different classes are used:

MenuBar - This represents the actual menu bar. It holds all the other menu objects.
Menu - This represents a drop down menu.
MenuItem - This represents an option on the drop down menu.

The following code creates a menu bar::

MenuBar menuBar = new MenuBar();
Menu fileMenu = new Menu("File");
MenuItem quitItem = new MenuItem("Quit");
 
menuBar.add(fileMenu);
fileMenu.add(quitItem);
 
quitItem.addActionListener( new QuitActionListener() );

To add the menu bar to a Frame you would call the setMenuBar() method on the frame. For example

setMenuBar(menuBar);

Notice how the quitItem object is associated with an ActionListener. The code on the ActionListener will be triggered when the Quit option is selected from the file menu.