What you need¶
Python 3.5 or newer
pip install guietta
This should also automatically install PySide2, if you don’t already have it. If you plan to use Matplotlib together with guietta, you should install that too. It is not done automatically.
Should I learn QT before starting?¶
No. Knowing QT will make it easier to digest the most advanced topics, but there is no need for it.
We will work with a simple assignment: make a GUI application that, given a number, doubles it. Here is how we begin:
from guietta import Gui, _ gui = Gui( [ 'Enter number' , '__num__' , ['Go'] ], [ 'Result ---> ' , 'result' , _ ] ) gui.run()
This code is enough to display a GUI with three widgets. Let’s see what each line does.
from Guietta import Gui, _
Every GUI made with Guietta is an instance of the
Gui class, so we
need to import it. We also use the special underscore _, explained later,
so we import it too.
gui = Gui( [ 'Enter number' , '__num__' , ['Go'] ], [ 'Result ---> ' , 'result' , _ ] )
Arguments to the
Gui constructor define the GUI layout.
The layout is specified with a series of Python
one for each widget row. Our example has two rows, so
there are two lists. Each list element
must be a valid widget. Here we see four different ones:
'Enter number': a string will be converted to a simple text display (in GUI parlance it is called a label). It is possible to change the text later on.
'__num__': a string starting and ending with double underscores will be converted to an edit box (imagine a form to be filled out). The edit box is initially empty.
['Go']: a string inside square brackets will be converted to a button that the user can click. The button’s text can also be changed later if wanted.
_: an underscore means no widget.
Notice how we formatted the lists to keep things aligned. You are encouraged to use spaces to make the GUI layout visible right in the code.
The constructor will create all these widgets and arrange them in a regular grid. At this point, the GUI is ready to be displayed.
This line displays the GUI and starts the QT event loop. This function
will not return until the GUI is closed (there are ways around this, and
we will see them later). If you try the GUI, you will notice that
Go button does nothing, since we did not assign it any function.
We will see how to do that in the next chapters.
Guietta’s magic properties¶
Each GUI widget is assigned a name, which is usually automatically derived from the constructor: any text-based widget has a name that corresponds to the initial widget text. Special characters in the text are removed in order to be sure that the resulting name is a valid Python identifier. In practice, this means that letters a-Z, A-Z, numbers 0-9 and underscores are kept, preserving case, and everything else is removed, including spaces:
gui = Gui(['This is button 2!']) gui.Thisisbutton2 = 'new text'
The GUI shown in the previous chapter will have five widgets: “Enternumber”, “num”, “Go”, “Result”, and “result”. If a name is a duplicate, it is auto-numbered starting with the number 2.
In case the widget name becomes too long, guietta supports a tuple syntax to set a custom name:
gui = Gui([ ('Very very long label text', 'short_name') ]) gui.short_name = 'new text'
The tuple syntax can be used with any supported widget. The general form is (QWidget, ‘name’), where QWidget can be any of the supported widget generation syntax (strings to create labels, etc.)
All widgets are available in the
widgets dictionary, so it is possible
to use all ordinary QT methods:
but Guietta makes it much easier, by automatically creating magic properties for the widgets:
gui.result = 'foo'
Magic properties are not real Python properties, because they are not defined in the class but instead are emulated using getattr/setattr, but behave in the same way. Properties can be read too:
labeltext = gui.Enternumber
Labels can be assigned anything:
gui.result = 3.1415 gui.result = ['a', 'b', 'c'] gui.result = dict(a=1, b='bar', c=None)
A list will result in a multi-line label, one element per line. A dictionary will be displayed using two columns, one item per line, with keys on the left column and values on the right one. Anything else is converted to a string using str() on the value being assigned.
Magic properties work for buttons and other widgets too, but with different object types. For example, a button will accept a callable that will be called when the button is clicked. A complete list of property types is available in the reference guide.
A special case where magic properties are also used are dynamical layouts, described in more detail here.
Working with normalized names¶
It is possible to obtain the name corresponding to a certain text using the normalized() module-level function:
from guietta import normalized print(normalized('This is button 2!'))
this code will return ‘thisisbutton2’.
It is also possible to recover the original text that was used to create the widget, given the normalized name (this can be useful when using the get() feature, described later, that returns the normalized name). The Gui.names property is a mapping that provides the original name:
would return ‘This is button 2!’.
normalized() and names were added in version 0.4.
Define magic properties for custom widgets¶
Guietta’s properties work on any widget that respects the following protocol:
- defines a __guietta_property__() method
- that returns a tuple with two callables: get() and set(value).
Note that get() and set() are just conventional names, actual functions can have a different name. The get function must take no arguments and return the value. The set function must take exactly one positional value, and the return value (if any) is ignored.
The following example shows a widget where the property is a number shown as text:
class MyLabel(QLabel): def __init__(self): super().___init__('0') def __guietta_property__(self): def get_number(): return float(self.getText()) def set_number(num): self.setText('%5.3f' % num) return (get_number, set_number)
If a widget is created with a text generated dynamically, it will not be possible to use a magic property as described above:
row = [ 'label%d'%x for x in range(10) ] gui = Gui(row)
if now we want to address all labels, we would need to write explicitly:
gui.label0 = 'foo' gui.label1 = 'bar' ...
Guietta allows to retrieve a proxy for the widget properties. It is a simple namedtuple of type GuiettaProperty, with two members: get() and set(), the latter taking a single argument:
p = gui.proxy('label0') p.set('foo') a = p.get() # a is now 'foo'
which could be used as follows:
for x in range(10): gui.proxy('label%d'%x).set('foo %d' % x)
Property proxies were introduced in version 0.4.
If you have tried to run the previous example from the command prompt, you will have seen the following output when calling set():
... <guietta.guietta._returnUndoContextManager.<locals>.decorator.<locals>.wrapper.<locals>.InnerUndoContextManager object at 0x7f188487a5c0> ...
This is expected. The set() call can be used as a context manager to temporarily replace the widget contents with something else. When the context manager exists, the widget contents are automatically restored:
gui.status = 'idle' label = gui.proxy('status') ... with label.set('busy'): ... do something
the label will show “busy” while the statements inside the with block are executed, and will revert back to “idle” afterwards.
Property contexts were introduced in version 0.4.
There are several ways to assign actions. Most rely on QT concept of event: an event is something that happens to a widget (for example, a button is clicked), and this event causes some piece of code to be executed. Events only work if the QT event loop has been started, which is done automatically by gui.run(). The “GUI queues” chapter later on describes how one can work without the event loop, if desired.
The events layer¶
The canonical Guietta way to specify events is to add a layer to the gui, using the events() method:
gui = Gui( [ 'Enter number' , '__num__' , ['Go'] ], [ 'Result ---> ' , 'result' , _ ] ) gui.events([ _ , _ , recalc ], [ _ , _ , _ ] )
Notice how we have kept exactly the same layout for the Gui constructor and the events() method. This makes immediately visible that the recalc event has been assigned to the Go button, while other widgets are ignored.
An event assigned this way can be any Python callable, thus we need to define a recalc function before the gui is constructed:
def recalc(gui, *args): gui.result = float(gui.num)*2
The first argument to an event function is always the gui instance that generated the event. Other arguments may be added depending on the QT signal that generated the event. Since we are not interested in them, we put a generic *args there.
The recalc function is updating the Gui using the magic properties described in the previous chapter. Since the properties always return strings, it uses float() to convert the string to a number.
In QT, a single widget can have several different events. For example, an edit box can trigger an event every single time the text is changed, or just when Return is pressed. Guietta assigns to each widget a default event, which is the one that makes sense most of the time (the list of default events for each widget is listed in the reference guide).
It is possible to specify a custom event using the tuple syntax:
gui = Gui( [ 'Enter number' , '__num__' , ['Go'] ], [ 'Result ---> ' , 'result' , _ ] ) gui.events([ _ , ('textEdited', recalc) , recalc ], [ _ , _ , _ ] )
The tuple must be (‘event_name’, callable). The event name must be a valid one for the widget, and a list can be found in the QT documentation, where it is called a signal. The QT documentation lists the possible signals for each widget, for example for edit boxes, in the “Signals” chapter.
Here we are assigning the recalc function to the textEdited event, which is fired every time the text in the editbox is updated by the user. Try it and you should see the value in the result label updating at every keystroke.
Assign a callable¶
Buttons (ordinary buttons, checkboxes and radio buttons, that in QT are all derived from QAbstractButton) can be assigned any python callable using Guietta’s magic properties:
def handler(gui, *args): print('handler!') gui.mybutton = handler
Due to how the QT signal/slots mechanism works, it is not possible to read the same property to get the button handler.
If your GUI events are relatively simple, you might be able to do away with their definitions entirely, using the gui.auto decorator:
@gui.auto def recalc(gui, *args): gui.result = float(gui.num)*2 gui.run()
When the “auto” decorator is used, Guietta will inspect the function code, detect any property read like the gui.num above (but not the gui.result, which is a property store), and automatically connect the decorated function to the default event of that widget. Since the default event for editboxes is returnPressed, the above code will run every time the user presses Return on the editbox. The Go button at this point could be removed.
Notice that the auto decorator is a member of a Gui instance, and not a standalone one. Thus any decorated function must be declared after the gui is constructed.
due to how the code introspection features work (from the standard library inspect module) the @auto decorator will not work on the Python command prompt.
The with statement¶
We saved the best for last. Enter the with statement:
with gui.Go: gui.result = float(gui.num)*2 gui.run()
The “with magic property” statement will save the code block and execute it when the corresponding widget, in this case the Go button, fires its default event.
The as clause refers to the same widget, which is useful if the with block needs to refer to the widget itself:
with gui.widgetWithVeryLongName as w: gui.result = w.text()
Multiple with blocks can be defined, and multiple widgets can be listed in a single with block, without limits:
with gui.a, gui.b: gui.result = float(gui.a) + float(gui.b)
If multiple widgets are listed, the as clause, if present, will refer to the last widget in the list.
While extremely simple and intuitive, this style has a number of caveats:
- signal arguments are not supported. The example above was a mouse click, but for example a valueChanged() signal from a slider would not have transferred the new slider value.
- nested with statements will not work
- like the @auto decorator above, it is not guaranteed to work on a Python prompt. It works on the standard Python one, but for example will not work with some versions of IPython.
- the code inside with block is also executed once when it is encoureted for the first time, before gui.run() is called. This is unavoidable due to how code is parsed by Python. Most probably, it will generate an exception (in this case, because the gui.num content cannot be converted to a float object), and the guietta’s with code block will discard all such exceptions.
It is possible to protect such a code block using Guietta’s is_running attribute:
with gui.Go: if gui.is_running: gui.result = float(gui.num)*2
this way, one is sure that the code will be executed only under gui.run(), but most of the time there is no need.
Most of the above action assignments end up calling guietta.connect(), which has the following signature:
guietta.connect(widget, signal_name='default', slot=None)
It can be used to explicitly connect a certain widget instance to the callable slot, when the signal signal_name is emitted.
You may have noticed that, in our events example above, there was
no exception catching in the event functions.
Guietta by default catches all exceptions and pops a warning up to the user
if one happens. This behavior can be modified with the
guietta.Exceptions enum, which has four values:
- Exceptions.POPUP: the default one, a warning popup is shown
- Exceptions.PRINT: the exception is printed on standard output
- Exceptions.SILENT: all exceptions are silently ignored
- Exceptions.OFF: no exception is caught, you have to do all the work.
The value must be given to the Gui constructor using the
from guietta import Gui, _, Exceptions gui = Gui( [ 'Enter number' , '__num__' , ['Go'] ], [ 'Result ---> ' , 'result' , _ ], exceptions = Exceptions.SILENT ) # Ignore exceptions
exceptions keyword can also accept any Python callable. In this case,
when an exception occurs the callable will be called with the exception
as an argument.
A completely different way of getting events out of the guis is to use Guietta’s get() method instead of run().
With get(), the GUI behaves like a queue of events. These events are exactly the same as the ones we have seen before, but instead of triggering a function or a with block, they are put into an internal queue.
get() blocks until an event happens. It returns the name of the widget that generated the event, plus an Event object with additional information about the event:
name, event = gui.get()
By the way, get() automatically shows the GUI if had not been shown before.
If you try to call
gui.get() and click on the Go button,
you should see something like this:
>>> gui.get() ('Go', Event(signal=<bound PYQT_SIGNAL clicked of QPushButton object at 0x7fef88dc9708>, args=[False]))
here we see that the event name was Go, as expected, and the Event object tells us some details about the QT signal. Most of the time, we do not need to even look at the detailed information.
If instead you call
gui.get() and click the X to close the window,
the result will be:
>>> gui.get() (None, None)
This is how we discover that the user has closed the window.
if you have clicked multiple times on the Go button in between the get() calls, you will have to call
gui.get()the same number of times before getting
(None, None), because you have to empty out the event queue.
The usual way of using get() is to put it into an infinite loop, breaking out of it when we get None:
while True: name, event = gui.get() if name == 'Go': print('You clicked Go!') gui.result = float(gui.num)*2 elif name == None: break
It is important to keep whatever is done in the loop very short, because for the whole time we are outside get(), the GUI is not responsive to user clicks and will not be redrawn if dragged, etc.
A word on exceptions¶
If you have tried the previous code clicking Go without entering a number before, or entering something else like a letter, the loop will have exited with an exception caused by the failed float() call.
This happens because, when using get(), the exception catching described above is not used. Instead, we should be prepared to catch any exception generated by the code. Rather than using a big try/except for the whole loop, it is best to put the the exception handling right where it is needed, in order to be able to display a meaningful error message to the user. Something like this:
if name == 'Go': try: gui.result = float(gui.num)*2 except ValueError as e: gui.result = e
Notice how we are displaying the error message right in the GUI.
The get() call shown before blocks forever, until an event arrives. However the call syntax is identical to the standard library queue.get call:
Gui.get(self, block=True, timeout=None)
If we pass a timeout argument (in seconds), the call will raise a
guietta.Empty exception if timeout seconds have passed without a event.
This feature is useful to “wake up” the event loop and perform some tasks
regularly. Just for demonstration purposes, this loop re-uses the
Enter number label to show a counter going up an 10 Hz. while still
being responsive to the Go button:
from guietta import Empty counter = 0 while True: try: name, event = gui.get(timeout=0.1) except Empty: counter += 1 gui.Enternumber = counter continue if name == 'Go': try: gui.result = float(gui.num)*2 except ValueError as e: gui.result = e elif name is None: break
continue statement in the except clause. If it was not there,
execution would have progressed to the
if statement below, and the
handler for the Go button might be executed multiple times.
Labels and buttons can display images instead of text: just write the
image filename as the label or button text, and if the file is found,
it will be used as an an image. By default, images are searched in the
current directory, but the images_dir keyword argument can be supplied
Gui constructor to change it. So for example:
import os.path from guietta import Gui, _ gui = Gui( [ _ , ['up.png'] , _ ], [ ['left.png'] , _ , ['right.png'] ], [ _ , ['down.png'] , _ ], images_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__))
This code will display four image buttons arranged in the four directions,
provided that you have four PNG images with the correct filename
in the same directory as the python script. Notice how we use
to get the directory where our script resides.
Sometimes we would like for a widget to be bigger than the others, spanning multiple rows or columns. For example a label with a long text, or a horizontal or vertical slider, or again a plot made with Matplotlib should occupy most of the window. The following example introduces two new Guietta symbols, ___ (three underscores) and III (three capital letter i) which are used for horizontal and vertical expansion:
from guietta import Gui, _, ___, III, HS, VS gui = Gui( [ 'Big label' , ___ , ___ , VS('slider1') ], [ III , III , III , III ], [ III , III , III , III ], [ _ , 'a label' , 'another label' , _ ], [HS('slider2'), ___ , ___ , _ ] )
We also introduce the new widgets
HS (horizontal slider) and
VS (vertical slider). The rules for expansion are:
- a widget can be continued horizontally to the right with ___ (the HS widget shown above)
- a widget can be continued vertically below with III (the VS widget shown above)
- the two continuations can be combined as shown for ‘Big label’ to obtain a big rectangular widget (here ‘Big label’ is a 3x3 widget). The widget must be in the top-left corner in the layout, while in the GUI it will appear centered.
The additional labels have been inserted to expand the layout. Without them, QT would have compressed the empty rows and columns to nothing.
Matplotlib provides a QT-compatible widget. Guietta wraps it into its M() widget:
from guietta import Gui, M, ___, III, VS gui = Gui( [ M('plot') , ___ , ___ , VS('slider') ], [ III , III , III , III ], [ III , III , III , III ], [ III , III , III , '^^^ Move the slider' ], )
Here we define a big M widget, giving it the name plot. If a static plot was wanted, we could now directly draw into it. But since we like flashy things, we will make a plot that updates based on the slider position.
The M() widget has a magic property to refresh the plot: if you assign it a numpy array, it will just replot itself. If the array is 2d, it will use imshow(). Here is a simple callback to redraw the plot:
import numpy as np def replot(gui, value): t = np.linspace(0, 1+value/10, 500) gui.plot = np.tan(t)
The callback, as usual, has the gui as its first argument. Since we intend to connect it to the slider, it also has a value argument, that will be the slider position. Guietta’s sliders are basic QT sliders with a value that can go from 0 to 99 included.
If more control is needed, one could manually draw onto the widget:
import numpy as np def replot(gui, value): ax = gui.plot.ax ax.clear() ax.set_title('y=tan(x)') t = np.linspace(0, 1+value/10, 500) ax.plot(t, np.tan(t), ".-") ax.figure.canvas.draw()
The callback can find the axis to draw on using “gui.<widgetname>.ax”. It then proceeds to clear the axis and use normal Matplotlib commands. At the end, the canvas is redrawn.
it is important to clear the axis before starting, otherwise the old plots will still be there and, in addition to confuse the drawing, things will slow down a lot very quickly because Matplotlib will be still redrawing all of them.
To simplify these requirements, Guietta provides a context manager that handles the clearing and redrawing. Thus the above callback can be simplified to this:
from guietta import Ax def replot(gui, value): with Ax(gui.plot) as ax: ax.set_title('y=tan(x)') t = np.linspace(0, 1+value/10, 500) ax.plot(t, np.tan(t), ".-")
We now need to connect this callback to our slider:
gui.events( [ _ , _ , _ , replot ], [ _ , _ , _ , _ ], [ _ , _ , _ , _ ], )
and run the GUI:
replot(gui, 1) gui.run()
Notice how we first call the callback ourselves, giving it a default value, in order to have a plot ready when the GUI is displayed.
The M() widget has an optional subplots keyword:
this will create a widget with 6 subplots organized in two rows. The guietta.myplot.ax member will be the return value from the subplots call, so it will be two lists with three ax objects each.
if the subplots keyword is set to any value different from its default, the Ax context manager cannot be used.
pyqtgraph is a plotting module with less features than matplotlib, but much faster. It is ideal if the graph must be updated frequently. Guietta wraps it into its PG() widget:
import numpy as np from guietta import Gui, PG, ___, III, _, VS gui = Gui( [ PG('myplot'), ___, ___, VS('slider') ], [ III , III, III, III ], [ III , III, III, III ], [ III , III, III, '^^^ Move the slider' ], )
Replotting in pyqtgraph is much simpler than in matplotlib: we just have to call the widget’s plot() method, setting clear=True to ensure that the previous plot is erased:
with gui.slider: t = np.linspace(0, 1+gui.slider/10, 500) gui.myplot.plot(t, np.tan(t), clear=True)
Now we initialize the plot with a default one, and run the gui:
gui.slider = 1 gui.run()
It is also possible to use the PG widget’s magic property, which accepts 1d numpy arrays:
gui.myplot = np.arange(100)
If something more complex is needed, remember that pyqtgraph are full-featured QT widgets, so they can be instantiated and dropped into Guietta without the need to use the PG() wrapper.
Support for pyqtgraph was introducted in version 0.3.5.
For displaying images, the PGI() widgets provides a pyqtgraph.ImageView widget. 2d numpy arrays can be assigned to its property:
gui = Gui([PGI('myimage')]) gui.myimage = np.arange(100).reshape((10,10))
Support for pyqtgraph images was introducted in version 0.3.9.
Guietta supports extremely basic splash screens, with the
splash(text, textalign=<PySide2.QtCore.Qt.Alignment object>, width=None, height=None, color=PySide2.QtCore.Qt.GlobalColor.lightGray, image=None)¶
Display and return a splash screen.
This function displays a splashscreen and returns a QSplashScreen instance.
The splashscreen must be closed with close() or finish(gui.window()). Alternatively, it will close when the user clicks on it.
The splash function was introducted in version 0.3.1.
Sometimes a handler function needs to run for a long time, and during that time the GUI would be frozen. In order to avoid this, the Gui class allows to span a function into a background thread. Once the function is done, an optional callback in the main thread will be triggered.
execute_in_background(self, func, args=(), callback=None)¶
funcin a background thread and updates GUI with a callback.
When func is done, the callback is called in the GUI thread. The callback receives a reference to this Gui instance as the first argument, plus whatever was returned by
funcas additional arguments.
Using other QT classes¶
Guietta makes available several other useful QT classes (like QFileDialog) without the need to import directly from PySide2:
from guietta import QFileDialog
a complete list is available in the reference guide.
Sometimes you want to insert a Gui inside another one, for example in a program that builds its interface dynamically from basic GUI building blocks. Guietta supports it as a special case of its magic properties:
gui.label = another_gui
another_gui are two guietta.Gui instances, the gui.label
widget (which could be any kind of widget) will be removed, and in its place
the entire another_gui layout will appear, complete with all its widgets
The sub_layout example shows this trick in action.
Sub-layouts are commonly associated with group boxes, that draw a rectangle with a title around a window section. Guietta supports the QGroupBox widget with its G widget, which can be assigned directly another Gui instance:
gui = Gui( [ G('my group') ] ) gui.mygroup = another_gui
Instead of replacing the whole widget, this code will show the child Gui instance inside the group box, keeping it visible.
See also the groupbox example
Packaging your application¶
Guietta runs perfectly fine if you have a Python interpreter, but sometimes you want to package a self-contained program which is able to run without dependencies. Guietta does not provide anything specific, but there are several programs that can do this for generic Python applications. One such program is PyInstaller.
Please note that PyInstaller is an independent project and we cannot give any guarantee that it will work, nor provide any support.