Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu Control

4 May 20225 minutes to read

This section briefly explains about how to include ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu control in your ASP.NET MVC application using Visual Studio.

Prerequisites

System requirements for ASP.NET MVC controls

Create ASP.NET MVC application with HTML helper

Install ASP.NET MVC package in the application

Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC controls are available in nuget.org. Refer to NuGet packages topic to learn more about installing NuGet packages in various OS environments. To add ASP.NET MVC controls in the application, open the NuGet package manager in Visual Studio (Tools → NuGet Package Manager → Manage NuGet Packages for Solution), search for Syncfusion.EJ2.MVC5 and then install it.

The Syncfusion.EJ2.MVC5 NuGet package has dependencies, Newtonsoft.Json for JSON serialization and Syncfusion.Licensing for validating Syncfusion license key.

If you create ASP.NET MVC application with MVC4 package, search for Syncfusion.EJ2.MVC4 and then install it.

Add namespace

Add Syncfusion.EJ2 namespace reference in Web.config under Views folder.

<namespaces>
    <add namespace="Syncfusion.EJ2"/>
</namespaces>

Add style sheet

Checkout the Themes topic to learn different ways (CDN, NPM package, and CRG) to refer styles in ASP.NET MVC application, and to have the expected appearance for Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC controls. Here, the theme is referred using CDN inside the <head> of ~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml file as follows,

<head>
    ...
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC controls styles -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/20.1.55/fluent.css" />
</head>

Add script reference

In this getting started walk-through, the required scripts are referred using CDN inside the <head> of ~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml file as follows,

<head>
    ...
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC controls scripts -->
    <script src="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/20.1.55/dist/ej2.min.js"></script>
</head>

Register Syncfusion Script Manager

Open ~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml page and register the script manager EJS().ScriptManager() at the end of <body> in the ASP.NET MVC application as follows.

<body>
...
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC Script Manager -->
    @Html.EJS().ScriptManager()
</body>

Add ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu control

Now, add the Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu control in ~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml page.

@model List<object>

<div id="contextmenutarget">Right click/Touch hold to open the ContextMenu </div>
@Html.EJS().ContextMenu("contextmenu").Target("#contextmenutarget").Items((IEnumerable<object>)Model).Render()

<style>

	#contextmenutarget {
		border: 1px dashed;
		height: 250px;
		padding: 10px;
		position: relative;
		text-align: center;
		color: gray;
		line-height: 17;
		font-size: 14px;
	}
</style>
public ActionResult Index()
{    
    List<object> menuItems = new List<object>();
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Cut"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Copy"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Paste"
    });
    return View(menuItems);
}

Press Ctrl+F5 (Windows) or ⌘+F5 (macOS) to run the app. Then, the Syncfusion ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu control will be rendered in the default web browser.

ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu Control

Rendering items with Separator

The Separators are the horizontal lines that are used to separate the menu items. You cannot select the separators. You can enable separators to group the menu items using the separator property. Cut, Copy, and Paste menu items are grouped using the separator property in the following sample.

@model List<object>

<div id="contextmenutarget">Right click/Touch hold to open the ContextMenu </div>
@Html.EJS().ContextMenu("contextmenu").Target("#contextmenutarget").Items((IEnumerable<object>)Model).Render()

<style>

	#contextmenutarget {
		border: 1px dashed;
		height: 250px;
		padding: 10px;
		position: relative;
		text-align: center;
		color: gray;
		line-height: 17;
		font-size: 14px;
	}
</style>
public ActionResult Index()
{
    //define the array of JSON
    List<object> menuItems = new List<object>();
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Cut"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Copy"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Paste"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        separator = true
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Font"
    });
    menuItems.Add(new
    {
        text = "Paragraph"
    });
    return View(menuItems);
}

The separator property should not be given along with the other fields in the MenuItem.

ASP.NET MVC ContextMenu with Separator

View Sample in GitHub.

See also