wxPython and setting attributes to many controls

[convoluted]

Hey all,

Hopefully this will help someone with a problem I encountered. For a few days now I was looking for a way to concisely set the attributes to numerous controls without duplicating attribute code again and again. For example, let's say I have 3 static text controls and I would like to change the background and foreground color and font style on each. I would need to do something like:

text1 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text1", size=(10,-1))
text1.SetBackgroundColour('#444444')
text1.SetForegroundColour('#ffffff')
text1.SetFont(text1)

text2 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text2", size=(30,-1))
text2.SetBackgroundColour('#444444')
text2.SetForegroundColour('#ffffff')
text2.SetFont(text1)

text3 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text3", size=(50,-1))
text3.SetBackgroundColour('#444444')
text3.SetForegroundColour('#ffffff')
text3.SetFont(text1)

Tedious right? Now imagine doing this for many many text controls, buttons, etc etc.

It sure would be nice to just use, say a function, to set the attributes of a particular control. So here's what I devised:

# Set the function that defines all of the attributes changes to the passed controls
def setControlAttributes(name, param):
    if param&1==1: name.SetBackgroundColour('#444444')
    if param>>1&1==1: name.SetForegroundColour('#ffffff')
    if param>>2&1==1: name.SetFont(text_font)

text1 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text1", size=(10,-1))
setControlAttributes(text1, 1)

text2 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text2", size=(30,-1))
setControlAttributes(text2, 4)

text3 = wx.StaticText(self, -1, "text3", size=(50,-1))
setControlAttributes(text3, 7)

In the above case, text1 will gain attribute 1 properties, text2 will gain attribute 2 properties, and text3 will gain all three attribute properties.

Remember 1 in binary is 001, 4 is 010, and 7 is 111. Attribute 1 corresponds to the first bit, attribute the second bit, etc. You can add any number of attributes as you like (within reason). Hope this helps someone out there.

[cghtkh]

Another way to to add the controls to a list.

# initialize controls
text_ctrls = []
for x in xrange(1,4):
    text_ctrls.append(wx.StaticText(self, -1, "Text%d" %x, size=( (x-1)*20+10 ,-1)))

# set attributes
for x in xrange(3):
    text_ctrls[x].SetBackgroundColour(color[x])  # color can be initialized in a list somewhere

[TrustyTony]

Why don't use regular, readable function:

def mystatic(self,label,size,font):
    text = wx.StaticText(self, -1, label, size=(size,-1))
    text.SetBackgroundColour('#444444')
    text.SetForegroundColour('#ffffff')
    text.SetFont(font)
    return text

[convoluted]

Wow, thanks tonyjv, that never even occurred to me! I'll have to give that a try, indeed it looks a lot more readable and simple.

cghtkh, I'll give that method a try too, looks promising too.