How to Disable a Menu Item in JavaFX

In this article, we show how to disable a menu item in JavaFX.

More than likely, if you've used any type of software, you have seen disabled menu items.

Many software programs disable menu items if they can't be used for a given circumstance. For example, if you've just opened a program and haven't done anything, for example, the undo menu item may be disabled (since you haven't done anything).

This can be seen with the following image: Disabled menu item.

JavaFX allows this functionality easily through the setDisable() function. If you take the menu item and use the setDisable() function and set it equal to true, this disables the menu item.

The following code shows this below.

MenuItem saveas= new MenuItem("Save As..."); filemenu.getItems().add(saveas); saveas.setDisable(true);

So the above code creates a menu item named save as with its text equal to, "Save As..."

This menu item is then added to the menu named filemenu.

We then disable the menu item by the setDisable() function, setting the parameter to true.

So this is all that is required to disable a menu item in JavaFX.

To see full code that disables the "Save As..." menu item in a File menu and disables the "Cut" menu item in an Edit menu, see the the following code shown below.

import javafx.application.Application; import static javafx.application.Application.launch; import javafx.application.Platform; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.control.Menu; import javafx.scene.control.MenuBar; import javafx.scene.control.MenuItem; import javafx.scene.control.SeparatorMenuItem; import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane; import javafx.stage.Stage; public class NewClass6 extends Application { static String result[]; @Override public void start(Stage primaryStage) { primaryStage.setTitle("Software Program"); //Menu name Menu filemenu= new Menu ("File"); //Create and add menu items to menu MenuItem newproject= new MenuItem("New Project..."); filemenu.getItems().add(newproject); MenuItem newfile= new MenuItem("New File..."); filemenu.getItems().add(newfile); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem openproject= new MenuItem("Open Project..."); filemenu.getItems().add(openproject); MenuItem openfile= new MenuItem("Open File..."); filemenu.getItems().add(openfile); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem save= new MenuItem("Save"); filemenu.getItems().add(save); MenuItem saveas= new MenuItem("Save As..."); filemenu.getItems().add(saveas); saveas.setDisable(true); MenuItem saveall= new MenuItem("Save All"); filemenu.getItems().add(saveall); filemenu.getItems().add(new SeparatorMenuItem()); MenuItem exit= new MenuItem("Exit"); filemenu.getItems().add(exit); //creates Edit menu Menu editmenu= new Menu("Edit"); //Adds menu items to menu MenuItem cut= new MenuItem("Cut"); editmenu.getItems().add(cut); cut.setDisable(true); MenuItem copy= new MenuItem("Copy"); editmenu.getItems().add(copy); MenuItem paste= new MenuItem("Paste"); editmenu.getItems().add(paste); //Main menu bar MenuBar menubar= new MenuBar(); menubar.getMenus().addAll(filemenu, editmenu); BorderPane layout= new BorderPane(); layout.setTop(menubar); Scene scene1= new Scene(layout, 300, 300); primaryStage.setScene(scene1); primaryStage.show(); } public static void main(String[] args) { launch(args); } }

So we import all the packages we need, create our class, override the start method, and set the title of our stage.

We then create our menu bar, which will hold all the menus we create. In this code, we create a File menu and an Edit Menu.

We then create the File menu and add all the menu items to it.

We disable the "Save As..." menu item using the statement, saveas.setDisable(true);

Now the "Save As..." menu item cannot be clicked and is just grayed out.

We then create the Edit menu and add all the menu items to it.

We disable the "Cut" menu item using the statement, cut.setDisable(true);

This grays out thne Cut menu item, so that the user cannot click it.

To see how the image of how this code would look, see the image at the following link: JavaFX menu with disabled menu items.

In actual real-world applications, you wouldn't just disable it straight out like this in code. You would have conditional statements and other such code that would determine when certain menu items would be disabled based on certain conditions. This just goes to show you how it would be done.

So this is how menu items can be disabled in JavaFX.

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