Seeking Alternatives to UIMenuController for Text Input Field Customization

Question

I'm currently working on migrating a Xamarin.Forms project to MAUI, where I need to customize the behavior of text input fields, especially on iOS. Previously, in Xamarin.Forms, I utilized UIMenuController to manage options like copy, paste, and cut. However, I've recently learned that UIMenuController is deprecated.

public class CustomEntry : UITextField
{
    public override bool CanPerform(Selector action, NSObject withSender)
    {
        NSOperationQueue.MainQueue.AddOperation(() =>
        {
            UIMenuController.SharedMenuController.SetMenuVisible(false, false);
        });
        
        if (action.Name == "paste:" || action.Name == "copy:" || action.Name == "cut:")
            return false;
        return base.CanPerform(action, withSender);
    }
}

In light of this, I'm seeking alternative solutions or frameworks provided by Microsoft that offer similar functionality to UIMenuController.

Any insights or recommendations regarding alternative approaches would be invaluable to my migration process.

Thank you for your assistance!

Answer 1

Hello,

The Apple's doc shows how to use UIEditMenuInteraction , but it's in Swift. You can refer to the following code to convert it to C#:

(Since you haven't yet migrated the custom renderer to use Handlers, I added a custom UITextField in a .net-iOS project to simulate the Handler's platform view.)

  UIEditMenuInteraction editMenuInteraction = new UIEditMenuInteraction(new CutomUIEditMenuInteractionDelegate());

if (UIDevice.CurrentDevice.CheckSystemVersion(16, 0))         {             myentry.AddInteraction(editMenuInteraction!);// myentry is type of your 
 
            var longPress = new UILongPressGestureRecognizer(HandleLongClick);
 
            longPress.AllowedTouchTypes = new NSNumber[] {             0,1,2,3         };
 
            myentry.AddGestureRecognizer(longPress);
`

Longpress

private void HandleLongClick(UILongPressGestureRecognizer sender)
    {
        var location = sender.LocationInView(vc.View);//if there is a page in MAUI, this view should be page.handler.platformview (UIView)
        var configuration = UIEditMenuConfiguration.Create(null, location);
 
        // Present the edit menu interaction.
        editMenuInteraction.PresentEditMenu(configuration);
 
    }

UIEditMenuInteractionDelegate

public class CutomUIEditMenuInteractionDelegate : UIEditMenuInteractionDelegate
    {
 
        public CutomUIEditMenuInteractionDelegate()
        {
 
        }
 
        public override UIMenu? GetMenu(UIEditMenuInteraction interaction, UIEditMenuConfiguration configuration, UIMenuElement[] suggestedActions)
        {//custom menu
            var indentationMenu = UIMenu.Create("Indentation", new UIAction[]
            {
            UIAction.Create("title", null,null,(action)=>{ }
            )
            });
            var actions = suggestedActions;
            actions.Append(indentationMenu);
            var menu = UIMenu.Create(children: actions);
            return menu;
        }
    }

Best Regards,

Wenyan Zhang

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