Populating menu with label and value

[electricclay]

A typical HTML menu has a label and a corresponding value. I'm new to LiveCode but all the examples I've seen here of populating a menu from a database show only the label being populated. Will the control accept both a label and a value such as:
AK 1
AL 2
AR 3
Where the label is a state name but the value returned is an id. The ID would be the primary key on the database table.

[bn]

Hi electricclay,

welcome to the Forum.

using a popUp menu on a Mac you can do this

New stack, 1 field, 1 popUp menu button

set the script of the popUp menu to

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on mouseDown
   put "AK /|1" & cr & "AL/|2" & cr & "AR/|3" into tTemp
   set the text of me to tTemp
end mouseDown

on menuPick pItemName
   put pItemName into field 1
end menuPick

what is visible is "AK,AL,AR", the message on menupick sends "1,2,3" respectively.
This should work for Windows too. Can not test. Might even work with other types of Menu-Buttons in Windows.

see "Menu" in the dictionary though the entry is a bit opaque. Just ask here.

Menus are a bit tricky in Livecode because of different Human Interface Guidelines between the Operating systems.

Kind regards
Bernd

[dunbarx]

What Bernd said.

But this concept is easy. All buttons have a text property, but only menu style buttons will display that data directly. The menuItems of a menu style button in LC are simply the contents of the button. So in any button of any kind, you can:

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put "X" & return & "Y" & return & "Z" into button "yourButton"

The label of a menu style button is the currently selected menuItem. So to get at that "Y", you could

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set the label of btn "yourButton" to "Y"

or

Set the menuHistory of btn "yourButton" to 2

Same thing, but each has it strengths. Invoking either action sets the property of the other.

In an ordinary button, you would:

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answer line 2 of btn "yourButton"

or even:

set the label of  btn "yourButton" to line 2 of  btn "yourButton"

Just takes a little practice.

Craig Newman

[electricclay]

Thanks I'll play around with both solutions.