C# Console menus with Actions

Introduction

The focus of this article is to provide an easy-to-use menu system for C# console projects.

NuGet package Spectre.Console is required to construct the menu using Actions to execute items in the menu.

Benefits of using a menu

A developer can easily test different operations, whether to learn something new, quickly try out code slated for a project, or provide options for a dotnet tool.

Also, many online classes are organized into chapters/sections. Consider breaking them up into menu items.

Base parts

A class which is responsible for displaying menu items and what code to execute using an Action with or without parameters.

public class MenuItem
{

    public int Id { get; set; }
    public required string Text { get; set; }
    public required Action Action { get; set; }
    public override string ToString() => Text;
}

A class that builds the menu using the class above, and another class that has methods to execute when a menu item is selected.

In the sample projects provided

• The MenuOperations class is responsible for building the menu
• The Operations class contains methods to execute using an Action from the menu selection
  • Each method has code to display the method name along with code to stop execution, which, when pressing ENTER, returns to the menu.

Entry point

A while statement is used to present a menu, with one menu option to exit the application.

Example 1 uses an Action with no parameters

internal partial class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        while (true)
        {
            Console.Clear();
            var menuItem = AnsiConsole.Prompt(MenuOperations.SelectionPrompt());
            menuItem.Action();
        }
    }
}

Example 2 uses an Action with a parameter whose menuItem.Id property references a primary key in a database table; the operation, in this case, saves an image to disk.

internal partial class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        while (true)
        {
            Console.Clear();
            var menuItem = AnsiConsole.Prompt(MenuOperations.SelectionPrompt());
            menuItem.Action(menuItem.Id);
        }
    }
}

dotnet tool example to read column descriptions for tables in a database.

Implmentation

Using one of the provided sample projects, create a new console project.

• Add NuGet package Spectre.Console to the project
• Add folders, Models and Classes
• Add MenuItem under the Models folder
• Add an empty MenuOperations class under the Classes folder
• Add code provided from one of Main methods to display the menu
• Export the project as a new project template for a starter project

Tips

• When something is unclear, set breakpoints and examine the code in the local window
• Consider writing code in class projects that are executed from the Operations class, as in this class project, Customer record used here.

Source code

Source code 1 Source code 2 Source code 3