In today's world of desktop applications, there is a great amount of incentive in being able to develop applications that can run in more than one environment. Currently, there are a handful of options available for cross platform frameworks to develop desktop applications in Python; wxPython is one such cross platform GUI toolkit for the Python programming language. It allows Python programmers to simply and easily create programs with a complete, highly functional graphical user interface. The wxPython code style has changed quite a bit over the years and has become much more Pythonic. The examples that you will find in this book are fully up to date and reflect this change in style. This cookbook provides you with the latest recipes to quickly create robust, reliable, and reusable wxPython applications. These recipes will guide you right from writing simple, basic wxPython scripts all the way through complex concepts and also feature various design approaches and techniques in wxPython.
This book starts off by covering a variety of topics, from the most basic requirements of a wxPython application to some of the more in-depth details of the inner workings of the framework, thus laying a foundation for any wxPython application. It then explains event handling, basic and advanced user interface controls, interface design and layout, creating dialogs, components, extending functionality, and so on. We will conclude by learning how to build and manage applications for distribution.
For each of the recipes, there is first an introductory and then more advanced examples along with plenty of example code that shows you how to develop and manage user-friendly applications. For more experienced developers, most recipes also include an additional discussion of the solution, allowing you to further customize and enhance the component.
Chapter 1, wxPython Starting Points, teaches the basics of getting started with building applications with wxPython.
Chapter 2, Common User Controls, introduces you to the commonly used UI components and how use them in wxPython.
Chapter 3, UI Layout and Organization, shows you how to lay out and present user controls on screen using Sizers.
Chapter 4, Containers and Advanced Controls, introduces you to various container-type and specialized controls, such as web browsers.
Chapter 5, Data Displays and Grids, shows you how to display and work with data using the Grids, Lists, and DataView controls.
Chapter 6, Ways to Notify and Alert, teaches you the techniques of alerting and notifying users with information.
Chapter 7, Requesting and Retrieving Information, shows you how to prompt users for information and input.
Chapter 8, User Interface Primitives, shows you how to use DeviceContexts to draw and customize your own UI components.
Chapter 9, Creating and Customizing Components, teaches you the techniques of designing and creating your own custom controls.
Chapter 10, Getting Your Application Ready for Release, shows you how to manage application configuration and build packages for release.
All the recipes in this book were written using the following software:
wxPython 3.0.2.0
Python 2.7.9
A small selection of recipes requires some additional external Python packages, which are described in the recipe.
In addition to these tools, you will just need a good text editor that can work with Python files.
This book is written for Python programmers wanting to develop user interfaces for their applications. An understanding of the Python language and basic object-oriented programming concepts is required to get the most out of this book.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "To make the control visible to the user we call the Show method."
A block of code is set as follows:
class MyPanel(sized.SizedScrolledPanel):
def __init__(self, parent):
super(MyPanel, self).__init__(parent)
self.SetSizerType("form")When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
class MyPanel(sized.SizedScrolledPanel):
def __init__(self, parent):
super(MyPanel, self).__init__(parent)
self.SetSizerType("form")
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
python main.py
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "So now, it's time to add this method in to build up a simple File and Edit menu."
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