Configuring main menu strip at login

[Earl]

I want to populate the main menu strip based upon the user's status (i.e,.
"user", "administrator", etc.) at time of login. The main form is running
with the login form as an owned form, so I'd like to trigger this menu
population at the time the user clicks OK on the login, closing the login
form and returning focus to the main form. It appears that the best way to
do this is when the main form gets re-activated, but obviously, the same
event would trigger at the time any other forms return focus to the main
form, so that doesn't seem very efficient to keep firing the menu population
on form Activated. Any thoughts on a better way to do this?

 

[Jeff Gaines]

I want to populate the main menu strip based upon the user's status (i.e,.
"user", "administrator", etc.) at time of login. The main form is running
with the login form as an owned form, so I'd like to trigger this menu
population at the time the user clicks OK on the login, closing the login
form and returning focus to the main form. It appears that the best way to
do this is when the main form gets re-activated, but obviously, the same
event would trigger at the time any other forms return focus to the main
form, so that doesn't seem very efficient to keep firing the menu
population on form Activated. Any thoughts on a better way to do this?

You could just set a boolean variable to false on loading the form and
true on activation - then bypass activation if it is true.

 

[Earl]

Jeff, thanks for the reply. That was actually one of my first attempts to
solve the issue. The problem there is that the menus would fire when the
form loads (it also activates). The menu setup boolean would be toggled and
would not fire again on the login form OK click. So what I'm doing now is to
set TWO static booleans from the login form, one for logged-in, and the
other to say that a user has changed. Thus, on form activate, I check for
logged in, if that is true, then check to see if the user variable has
changed. If so, repopulate menus, if not, nothing happens. The only way both
of those events could occur is if the user has clicked OK on the login form.
I will probably take this one step further, confirm that a valid password
has been entered, if not, give the user a small set of menu selections to
change databases, log back in, or exit.

Even more importantly, I've reconsidered the activated event. This will not
trigger when closing an owned form.

 

[Stephany Young]

Have you considered exposing a method in your 'main' form and calling that
method in the 'OK' button click event handler in the 'login' form.

That way you will have total control over the configuration of the menu
items.

Jeff, thanks for the reply. That was actually one of my first attempts to
solve the issue. The problem there is that the menus would fire when the
form loads (it also activates). The menu setup boolean would be toggled
and would not fire again on the login form OK click. So what I'm doing now
is to set TWO static booleans from the login form, one for logged-in, and
the other to say that a user has changed. Thus, on form activate, I check
for logged in, if that is true, then check to see if the user variable has
changed. If so, repopulate menus, if not, nothing happens. The only way
both of those events could occur is if the user has clicked OK on the
login form. I will probably take this one step further, confirm that a
valid password has been entered, if not, give the user a small set of menu
selections to change databases, log back in, or exit.

Even more importantly, I've reconsidered the activated event. This will
not trigger when closing an owned form.

 

[Earl]

The configuration part is done. Finding the appropriate event to fire the
method was what I was looking for. I'm still testing it, but I'm getting the
functioning I've been looking for. I ended up using the two static booleans
and the MdiChildActivate event on the main form. That event fires BOTH when
the MdiChild activates and when it deactivates. The easiest approach on the
menus was to prepopulate with all selections and then use a switch to set
the appropriate top-level menus visible or not.

Have you considered exposing a method in your 'main' form and calling that
method in the 'OK' button click event handler in the 'login' form.

That way you will have total control over the configuration of the menu
items.

 

[Stephany Young]

I think you misunderstood me.

From your earlier posts, it appears that you you have a main form, and
somewhere before it's Load event handler finishes, you spawn a modal login
form and, in addition, the modal login form can be spawned on-demand.

It also appears that somewhere you have a method that does the configuration
of the menus depending on the value of the username.

What I was saying was this ...

In the main form:

Public Sub LoginOK(ByVal username As String)

'call the menu configuration method

End Sub

In the login form:

Private Sub OKButton_Click(...) Handles OKButton.Click

...

CType(Application.OpenForms("MainForm"), MainForm).LoginOK(username)

...

End Sub

This way you don't have to worry about what events are happening when or
keeping track of things with 'flags'. As I said earlier, this gives you
total control.