Adding a button from an add-in to a TOC context menu

dbrandon — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:04:22 GMT

Hey all:

I would like to add a button to a group layer context menu in the table of contents. The button is from an add-in that also contains an extension. Should be straight-forward enough. The extension monitors the IActiveViewEvents_Event events and checks for a group layer being added by a specific name. When a layer is added, the IActiveViewEvents_ItemAddedEventHandler() is fired and calls a method that adds the button to the group layer context menus if the name is right. That mechanism is working. The snippet of code that is failing is below:

if (String.Compare(topLayer.Name, "Testing") == 0)
{
    // Set a uid for the group layer context menu.
    UID gUID = new UID();
    gUID.Value = "esriArcMapUI.GroupLayerContextMenu";     // "{863A0D98-73DC-4331-8658-ED0E22247E36}"

    // Get the command bar denoting that context menu.
    ICommandBar groupLayerContextMenu = ArcMap.Application.Document.CommandBars.Find(gUID, false, false) as ICommandBar;

    // If there is a group layer context menu.
    if (groupLayerContextMenu != null)
    {
        // Change the UID to the add-in command.
        gUID.Value = ThisAddIn.IDs.TestContextMenuButton;

        ICommandItem cmd = groupLayerContextMenu.Find(gUID);

        if (cmd == null)
        {
            cmd = groupLayerContextMenu.Add(uid, ref missing);                 // 'Command not available' error thrown here...
            cmd.Refresh();
        } 
    }
}

To me, it seems that the command is not found because ICommandBar.Add(uid) is trying to dig for it in the registry but because it resides in an add-in it has not been added to the registry. Is there another way to add a button, or any item for that matter, when it lives in an add-in? Or am I missing something simple?

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Adding a button from an add-in to a TOC context menu