Develop Reference

Python 2.7: Close a dialog without exiting the entire application

I'm running a script coded in python from a scripts menu in a desktop application. It's basically a giant macro that I wrote and added a GUI to. I'm pretty sure the GUI is a really old one that my desktop app uses called dialogKit from MIT.
GitHub still has it here.
The problem is the word "stop" at the very end of the dialog code.
I keep getting a "stop is undefined" message, which I understand, but I've tried everything to close the dialog and if I use exit(), sys.exit(), I don't get an error, but it also closes my entire desktop app.
I need to close the dialog and keep the software open.
The limited dialog documentation for what I'm using can be found here.
(you might have to click on the Dialog section. Their site uses frames.)
class MyDialog:
def __init__(self):
self.d = Dialog(self)
self.d.size = Point(300, 340)
self.d.Center()
self.d.title = "Halftone" #<----- Title of the dialogue
self.d.AddControl(STATICCONTROL, Rect(aIDENT, aIDENT, aIDENT, aIDENT), "frame", STYLE_FRAME)
# more controls and methods..
def on_ok(self, code):
return 1
def on_cancel(self, code):
print "blah"
def Run(self):
return self.d.Run()
d = MyDialog()
if d.Run()!= 1:
stop
I just need a way to change stop to something that 1) will prevent the script from running, and 2) close the dialog without quitting the entire application. This is the functionality of a typical "cancel" button, which is what I want.
Another option is the method called on_cancel(), which I also tried and could get the event itself to work, but still the entire application quits with any kind of exit().
The docs show a method called End(), which claims to terminate the dialog object, but I've tried and failed to get that to work either.

Okay, I'm posting an answer because I think I have a handle on your problem.
Try replacing stop with:
d.d.End()
If that works, you might want to try putting:
self.d.End()
inside of the on_cancel function in your class. That should close the dialogue without closing your program.

How does Clipboard work in wx?

I have following function in python -
def GetClipboardText():
text_obj = wx.TextDataObject()
rtext = ""
if wx.TheClipboard.IsOpened() or wx.TheClipboard.Open():
if wx.TheClipboard.GetData(text_obj):
rtext = text_obj.GetText()
wx.TheClipboard.Close()
return rtext
It works well when I invoke this function from a UI callback handler such as button click (The UI is in wxPython). But if I invoke function directly in a script, the wx.TextDataObject() returns None and the function fails.
Questions -
What particular UI class is the dependency for the clipboard to work? Do I need to show a frame on screen? Is there a work around like creating an invisible frame? Is frame what the clipboard depends on or is it something else?
Is it possible to use clipboard in a command line app without GUI?

Try initializing wx.App in your script. Many wx classes require it.

PyGTK - show MessageDialog and close it after specific time

I'm trying to create a new message dialog with no buttons inside. It will be showing some info, and I'm having problems with programmatically close it after some function executes. I've read about run() and response() functions and written some code:
def stop():
md.response(0)
md = gtk.MessageDialog(None, gtk.DIALOG_MODAL | gtk.DIALOG_DESTROY_WITH_PARENT, gtk.MESSAGE_QUESTION, gtk.BUTTONS_NONE, "Wait... computing...")
print 'closing in 5 secs...'
threading.Timer(5.0, stop).start()
md.run()
md.destroy()
The problem is, stop() executes after closing main application window. And even if the above program would work correctly, it wouldn't do what I wanted. Any ideas for closing a message dialog after a function executes?
Best regards, mopsiok

it is a realy hard work to make theaded gtk application. you will often end with a dead lock.
check in the doc of gtk for gtk.timeout_add.

Tkinter Keyboard Binds

I'm working on an interface using Tkinter and the canvas widget, and so far have found answers to issues I have had from others questions and the answers posted, but I am stumped on this one.
I have several keyboard binds in the class where my GUI elements are created, and they all work fine when the program is started. The binds looks something like this:
self.canvas.get_tk_widget().bind("<Control-o>",self.flash_open)
and are within the __init__ function of the class. As of yesterday, I initialized this class
to start the program, then waited for the user to select open from a menu, which then opened (among other things) a tkmessagebox
self.specfilename =askopenfilename(filetypes=[("spec", "")],initialdir= self.pathname)
With this filename I am able to retrieve my required variable names from a certain filetype (inconsequential to the problem). Today I modified the __init__ function to call the open function when the program starts. Since nothing else can be done until this file is opened, it would make sense to open it first thing. Once the file is selected and the Tkmessagebox is closed, the root window is active, but none of the keyboard binds work. My functions still work using the menu/buttons assigned to them, just not the binds. I have tried binding the shortcuts to the root, with the same result, and am now thinking it may be an issue with the order I am calling them
def __init__(self):
...
self.openfile() #calls the tkmessagebox
self.root.mainloop() #starts gui
I had actually run into this issue before, where a toplevel() instance was closed/destroyed and disabled the binds of the parent window. There isn't any error message to speak of, the binds just don't do anything. I should also mention I have tried to focus on the root window again using
self.openfile()
self.root.mainloop()
self.root.focus_set()
I got around it before by using the wm_withdraw() and wm_deiconify() functions to simply hide the child window, then close it after the program is complete. This fix is a little more difficult to apply in this case however. If anyone can shed some light on the cause of the problem I'd appreciate it.
Edit:
I've written up a runable code segment to show exactly what my issue is.
import os
from tkFileDialog import askopenfilename
from Tkinter import *
class Start:
def __init__(self):
self.root = Tk()
self.root.title('Binding Troubles')
menubar = Menu(self.root)
#add items and their commands to the menubar
filemenu = Menu(menubar, tearoff=0)
filemenu.add_command(label="Do work", command=self.do_work)
filemenu.add_command(label="Open File",command=self.openfile)
menubar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=filemenu)
#bind control-o to perform the do work function
self.root.bind("<Control-o>",self.flash_do_work)
self.root.bind("<Control-O>",self.flash_do_work)
#add the menubar to the GUI
self.root.config(menu=menubar)
#initially open a tkdialog to open a file
self.openfile()#comment out this line to make the bind work
self.root.focus()#also tried self.root.focus_set()
self.root.mainloop()
def flash_do_work(self,event):
#indirect tie to the do_work() function, I'm don't know a
#proper way to make functions handle calls from both events and non-events
self.do_work()
def openfile(self):
#gets current path
self.pathname = os.getcwd()
#Requests filename using a tkdialog
self.filename =askopenfilename(initialdir= self.pathname)
print self.filename
def do_work(self):
#placeholder for actual function; shows whether the bind is working or not
print "work"
Start()
The bind will work if self.openfile() is removed from __init__, and used only from the menu
Another Edit: I've updated the example again, giving a menu option to run the openfile() function. I noticed that if openfile() is called in __init__, the bind will not work. But if next the openfile function is called again, this time manually from the menu, the bind will start working again. Not exactly sure what to take from this. Also, my apologies for the post getting so long.

Change
self.openfile()
to
self.root.after(1, self.openfile)
This moves the call to askopenfilename into the main event loop. Having it outside the main event loop is somehow clobbering your event bindings.

I had this kind of problem a couple of times and it took quite a while until I found a solution I was comfortable with. As #Steven Rumbalski suggests I tried with delaying the application, which works but seems shaky.
Then I found the functions for waiting until something is complete, in this case wait_visibility(widget). This will delay execution until the widget is visible, which seems to be the thing to be waiting for. Try this:
self.root.wait_visibility(self.root) # Wait for root to be displayed
self.openfile()
Now; I'm not sure why this is so, and it seems that there may be differences depending on platform: Tkinter window event . This has nevertheless worked for me on Windows10 and Python 3.10.5.

How to stop a warning dialog from halting execution of a Python program that's controlling it?

Using Win32GUI and Watsup, I'm writing a bit of Python code to automate a search across a database that is accessed through a program that doesn't come with an interface for it. As such, I can take a string from a list and then input it into the search box and press 'lookup'.
However, when the search returns more than 1000 results, the program throws a warning dialog --which is simply a notification of the number of results--which halts the execution of the Python code. I can't get the code to progress past the line where it presses lookup.
At a guess, this would be because it doesn't expect a window or know how to handle a warning--but I don't either, other than manually accepting it. Below is the relevent sample of code, though it's probably not very enlightening. After "clickButton(LookupButton)", the execution halts.
LookupButtonlocation = elemstring.find("Lookup", AuthNameFieldlocation) - 15
#Use Regex search to find handles
number_regex = re.compile(';(\d+);')
AuthNameEdit = int(number_regex.search(elemstring[AuthNameFieldlocation:]).group(1))
LookupButton = int(number_regex.search(elemstring[LookupButtonlocation:]).group(1))
#Input new Author into Edit Field
setEditText(AuthNameEdit, "John Campbell")
#Click lookup button
clickButton(LookupButton)

I'm not a WATSUP user, but I do something very similar using pywinauto - in my case I'm running a number of automated tests that open various 3rd party programs that, in a similar way, throw up inconvenient warning dialogs. It's a bit difficult to deal with dialogs that you don't know about, however if you do know which dialogs appear, but not when they appear, you can start a thread to just deal with those pop-ups. The following is a simple example from what I'm doing, and uses pywinauto but you could adapt the approach for WATSUP:
import time
import threading
class ClearPopupThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self, window_name, button_name, quit_event):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.quit_event = quit_event
self.window_name = window_name
self.button_name = button_name
def run(self):
from pywinauto import application, findwindows
while True:
try:
handles = findwindows.find_windows(title=self.window_name)
except findwindows.WindowNotFoundError:
pass #Just do nothing if the pop-up dialog was not found
else: #The window was found, so click the button
for hwnd in handles:
app = application.Application()
app.Connect(handle=hwnd)
popup = app[self.window_name]
button = getattr(popup, self.button_name)
button.Click()
if self.quit_event.is_set():
break
time.sleep(1) #should help reduce cpu load a little for this thread
Essentially this thread is just an infinite loop that looks for a pop-up window by name, and if it finds it, it clicks on a button to close the window. If you have many pop-up windows you can open one thread per popup (bug that's not overly efficient, though). Because it's an infinite loop, I have the thread looking to see if an event is set, to allow me to stop the thread from my main program. So, in the main program I do something like this:
#Start the thread
quit_event = threading.Event()
mythread = ClearPopupThread('Window Popup Title', 'Yes button', quit_event)
# ...
# My program does it's thing here
# ...
# When my program is done I need to end the thread
quit_event.set()
This is not necessarily the only way to deal with your issue, but is a way that's worked for me. Sorry I can't really help you much with dealing with WATSUP (I always found pywinauto a bit easier to use), but I noticed on the WATSUP homepage (http://www.tizmoi.net/watsup/intro.html), Example 2 does something similar without using threads, i.e., looks for a named window and clicks a specific button on that window.