Enable Content Editor button depending on template type

Question

I'm building a custom content editor button which will issue a command passing the ID of the selected item. Is there a way to enable/disable my button based on the template of the selected item. I want my command to only be run-able for items of a specific template. Obviously I could simply check the template ID of the item within my command handler code (which I will do anyway) but I would like to make this a bit more user-friendly.

As a (sort of similar) example, if you select an item with no children, the delete-subitems button under the main delete button disappears. I couldn't see any obvious mechanism about how this works though.

Answer 1

In your command there is a QueryState method where you can hide or disable buttons.

Return:

• CommandState.Hidden to hide the button
• CommandState.Disabled to disable the button
• CommandState.Enabled to enable the button

An example is shown below:

public class MyCommand: Command
{
   public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
   {
      //main stuff here
   }

   public override CommandState QueryState(CommandContext context)
   {
      Error.AssertObject((object) context, "context");
      if (context.Items.Length == 0)
      {
         return CommandState.Disabled;
      }
      if (context.Items[0].TemplateID.ToString() != "{4F3D0700-F7E0-47E9-903E-FCA1CB08830C}")
      {
         return CommandState.Disabled;
      }
      return base.QueryState(context);
   }

}

Answer 2

Here is an alternative answer if you want to or are using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions for your context menu.

You can create a Context Menu script item in your SPE module and then using the Show if rules are met or not defined section of the Script item you can hide/show the menu based of a rule:

Then you can write your PowerShell script to do whatever you need to when the context menu is clicked.