BlackBerry menu ordinals and priorities - Part 2: System menu items

Part 1 explained basically how BlackBerry menus are ordered. In part 2 we’ll look at where system menu items (such as Close, Copy and Paste) fit, and how to work with them.

The interesting stuff

Built-in menu items

Built in menu items all have priorities and ordinals too. We can use the following bit of code (with the right kinds of controls on screen) to get the values:

	protected void makeMenu(Menu menu, int instance) {
		super.makeMenu(menu, instance);
		for(int i = 0; i < menu.getSize(); i++) {
			MenuItem menuItem = menu.getItem(i);
			System.out.println("Name: " + menuItem.toString() + " Ordinal: " + menuItem.getOrdinal() + " Priority: " + menuItem.getPriority());
		}
        }

So we get the following values:

So the priorities for some of the items (Clear Field, Show Symbols, Enable Multitap, and Switch Input Language) are Integer.MAX_INT, so they’ll always be the lowest priority. Other than that, there’s plenty of room in between all of those numbers to put other menu items wherever you want.

Say you wanted something to appear below the Close menu item. Just create a menu item like:

new MenuItem("Below Close", 300000000, 100) ... // etc


Also notice the Id value - this is obtained from MenuItem.getId() and won’t change, even if the device language changes the label of the item. These do not correspond to the constants in MenuItem (MenuItem.CLOSE, etc) - though some aren’t represented there.
The value comes in handy for these next tricks.

Removing built-in menu items

Always hated that Switch Input Language menu item? Here’s how to get rid of it!

	protected void makeMenu(Menu menu, int instance) {
		super.makeMenu(menu, instance);
		for(int i = 0; i < menu.getSize(); i++) {
			MenuItem menuItem = menu.getItem(i);
			if (menuItem.getId() == 10089) { // ID for Switch Input Language
				menu.deleteItem(i);
				break;
			}
		}
        }

Altering built-in menu items

Want to change the label for a built-in item? No problem:

	protected void makeMenu(Menu menu, int instance) {
		super.makeMenu(menu, instance);
		for(int i = 0; i < menu.getSize(); i++) {
			MenuItem menuItem = menu.getItem(i);

			if (menuItem.getId() == 9) { // Close menu item
				menuItem.setText("Adios"); // en espanol
				break;
			}
		}
	}

There is a setOrdinal method too, but this doesn’t seem to work - something I don’t understand about the menu implementation yet.

Anyway, this should get you started with playing with the BlackBerry system menus!