Dynamic UIMenuItems with @selector and dynamic methods

Question

I am trying to use UIMenuController for a dynamical menu (titles and actions come from a server). The problem is that I have to use UIMenuItems initWithTitle:action: where a

Answer 1

Unless the menu items do the same thing, why should they share an action? I would go ahead and write actions that specify a behavior you want and link the menu items up to those.

Answer 2

That approach would work, although you need a unique selector-name for every button and a mapping from that name to whatever you want to target.
For the selector name a unique string has to be chosen (UUIDs or maybe a sanitized & prefixed version of the title would work). Then you need one method that resolves the call and "alias" it with the different selector names:

- (void)updateMenu:(NSArray *)menuEntries {
    Class cls = [self class];
    SEL fwd = @selector(forwarder:);
    for (MenuEntry *entry in menuEntries) {
        SEL sel = [self uniqueActionSelector];
        // assuming keys not being retained, otherwise use NSValue:
        [self.actionDict addObject:entry.url forKey:sel]; 
        class_addMethod(cls, sel, [cls instanceMethodForSelector:fwd], "v@:@");
        // now add menu item with sel as the action
    }
}

Now the forwarder can look up what URL is associated with the menu item:

- (void)forwarder:(UIMenuController *)mc {
    NSLog(@"URL for item is: %@", [actionDict objectForKey:_cmd]);
}

To generate the selectors you could use something like:

- (SEL)uniqueActionSelector {
    NSString *unique = ...; // the unique part
    NSString *selString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"menu_%@:", unique];
    SEL sel = sel_registerName([selString UTF8String]);
    return sel;
}