Making a text based menu in Java is pretty easy – it’s easier than learning how to code a graphical menu at least.

First, let’s discuss the nature of a text based menu. You have a menu. It’s comprised of a bunch of choices you could select. Those selections could be numbers or characters or maybe even strings. When a selection is entered, it should decide if it is an acceptable selection and if it is, do something with it, otherwise report that it’s invalid. Finally, when a selection causes an action, the menu must be presented again when the action is finished working it’s magic.

Those are pretty general requirements for a text based menu. Let’s get started. Make a class called Menu and put a private Scanner listening to System.in

private Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

Now let’s make a method called display.

public void display() {
		System.out.println("-- Actions --");
		System.out.println(
				"Select an option: \n" +
				"  1) Run\n" +
				"  2) Jump\n" +
				"  3) Dodge \n" +
				"  4) Exit\n "
		);
		
		int selection = input.nextInt();
		input.nextLine();
// continues...

First, print out a title and then the possible selections. A call to the scanner’s nextInt will get the integer of the selection the user enters. This could become more involved if some major error handling was needed. There is a special line right after the nextInt: a single non-storing nextLine. Why? To stop input skipping.

Right after the input is stored in selection, use a switch structure to decide what to do.

		switch (selection) {
		case 1:
			this.run();
			break;
		case 2:
			this.jump();
			break;
		case 3:
			this.dodge();
			break;
		case 4:
			this.exit();
			break;
		default:
			System.out.println("Invalid selection.");
			break;
		}

This switch is based on selection and has four cases. Each case will trigger an action that mirrors the list printed out for the user. After each method is run, it will also break out of the switch statement.

Can you believe that’s all you need for the display method? So we can actually get some compilable code, just add these methods in. They don’t really do anything though.

	private void exit() {
                System.out.println("Exiting...");
		System.exit(1); 
	}

	private void dodge() {
	}

	private void jump() {
	}

	private void run() {
	}
} // ... ending display

One thing to notice is System.exit. We’ll need that for later after we setup a little loop. Basically, if the user enters the corresponding selection to exit, the program will terminate regardless. Feel free to add some print out lines to the empty methods so you know they’re actually working when you run it.

Finally, let’s try it out. Add a main method to your Menu class.

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Menu menu = new Menu();
		while (true)
			menu.display();
	}

First, an menu is constructed. Then what may appear to be bizarre is an infinite loop calling menu.display forever. This serves a very important function. When display runs once, it will wait for the user to enter something. If they enter something invalid, it will tell them so (where invalid right now just means not a selection, not bad input). If they enter a valid case in the switch, the actions will be performed. Then what? The loop takes care of it! It starts over again, waiting for input and so on. But how can you exit the program? The reason for the System.exit is to exit the program. In this program, hitting 4 will cause the program to exit despite the loop.

What about multiple menus? It’s pretty much the same, except you have a choice. You can force the user to navigate back down through the previous menu or you can optionally use another loop. Imagine a display2 method.

	public void display2() {
		
		display: while(true) {
			
			System.out.println("-- Secret Actions --");
			System.out.println(
					"Select an option: \n" +
					"  1) Dive\n" +
					"  2) High Jump\n" +
					"  3) Back\n "
			);
			int selection = input.nextInt();
			input.nextLine();
			
			switch (selection) {
			case 1:
				this.run();
				break;
			case 2:
				this.jump();
				break;
			case 3:
				System.out.println("Returning...");
				break display;
			default:
				System.out.println("Invalid action.");
				break;
			}
			
		}
		
	}

Yes, this looks long and complex. In reality much of the code is repeated directly from the first display method. The major difference is the while loop inside. display: while (true { is interesting. The display: is called a label. Labels allow you to break out of code segments easily without complex conditional triggers. In this case, when the user selects case 3, the loop will be broken and thus they will return to their previous menu.

Text based menus can end up being quite interactive despite their appearance.

Happy menu-ing.