MenuButton

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import panel as pn
pn.extension()

The MenuButton widget allows specifying a list of menu items to select from, triggering events when a menu item is clicked. Unlike other widgets, it does not have a value parameter. Instead it has a clicked parameter that can be watched to trigger events and which reports the last clicked menu item.

Discover more on using widgets to add interactivity to your applications in the how-to guides on interactivity. Alternatively, learn how to set up callbacks and (JS-)links between parameters or how to use them as part of declarative UIs with Param.

Parameters:

For details on other options for customizing the component see the layout and styling how-to guides.

Core

• clicked (str): The last clicked menu item

• items (list(tuple or str or None): Menu items in the dropdown. Allows strings, tuples of the form (title, value) or Nones to separate groups of items.

• split (boolean): Whether to add separate dropdown area to button.

Display

• button_style (str): The button style, either 'solid' or 'outline'.

• button_type (str): A button theme; should be one of 'default' (white), 'primary' (blue), 'success' (green), 'info' (yellow), 'light' (light), or 'danger' (red)

• icon (str): An icon to render to the left of the button label. Either an SVG or an icon name which is loaded from tabler-icons.io/.

• icon_size (str): Size of the icon as a string, e.g. 12px or 1em.

• disabled (boolean): Whether the widget is editable

• name (str): The title of the widget

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The MenuButton is defined by the name of the button and a list of items corresponding to the menu items.

The items can be single string values or as below tuples of string values. By separating items by None we can group them into sections:

menu_items = [('Option A', 'a'), ('Option B', 'b'), ('Option C', 'c'), None, ('Help', 'help')]

menu_button = pn.widgets.MenuButton(name='Dropdown', items=menu_items, button_type='primary')

pn.Column(menu_button, height=200)

The clicked parameter will report the last menu item that was clicked:

menu_button.clicked

You can bind to the clicked parameter

def handle_selection(clicked):
    return f'You clicked menu item: "{clicked}"'

pn.Column(
    menu_button,
    pn.bind(handle_selection, menu_button.param.clicked),
    height=200
)

The on_click method can trigger a function when a menu item is clicked:

text = pn.widgets.TextInput(value='Ready')

def b(event):
    text.value = f'You clicked menu item: "{event.new}"'
    
menu_button.on_click(b)

pn.Row(menu_button, text, height=200)

Button Type

The color of the button can be set by selecting one of the available button types:

pn.Column(*(pn.widgets.MenuButton(name=p, button_type=p, items=menu_items) for p in pn.widgets.MenuButton.param.button_type.objects))

Split Menu

Additionally we can move the dropdown indicator into a separate area using the split option:

split_menu_button = pn.widgets.MenuButton(name='Split Menu', split=True, items=menu_items, button_type="primary")
pn.Column(split_menu_button, pn.bind(handle_selection, split_menu_button.param.clicked), height=200)

If the button itself is clicked in split mode, the clicked property will report the value of the name parameter, i.e. in this case clicking it will set the clicked parameter to 'Split Menu'.

Icons

The MenuButton name and its items may contain Unicode characters and emojis, providing a convenient way to define common graphical buttons.

For the button it self, you can use more advanced icons by providing an svg icon value or a named icon loaded from tabler-icons.io:

file_items = ["\U0001F4BE Save", "🚪 Exit"]
help_items = ["⚖️ License", None, "\U0001F6C8 About"]
pn.Column(pn.Row(
    pn.widgets.MenuButton(name="File", icon="file", items=file_items, width=75, button_type="light"),
    pn.widgets.MenuButton(name="🧏🏻‍♂️ Help", items=help_items, width=100, button_type="light"),
    styles={"border-bottom": "1px solid black"}
    ), height=200, 
)

Controls

The MenuButton widget exposes a number of options which can be changed from both Python and Javascript. Try out the effect of these parameters interactively:

pn.Row(menu_button.controls, menu_button)

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