wxruby users - Apr 2009 - Creating a ... table/matrix/grid ?

Hey guys. First post, and I have a project which is ambitious (to me
anyway, since this is my first foray ever in GUI).
I want to dynamically create (from 2 arrays for instance) a table with
rows and columns, and each ''cell'' would behave like a
checkbox, sending
a query to a database tailored after the row/column in which it is (a
very simple query).

I''ve successfully done the same purpose with nested loops in a
text-only
Ruby environment. The same purpose could be obtained from, say, two
drop-down menus selecting the options and pressing a button - but I want
a quick, graphical way of doing it all (maybe check all the boxes then
use a submit button, that''d work too)..

Now that I''ve explained all that.. I am a complete newbie at wxruby. I
followed the first three or so tutorials but I don''t really know where
to go from there. Does anyone have a theoretical explanation of how to
accomplish what I want to do.. And maybe intermediary projects I can
accomplish to get there?

Sorry if I''m rambling a little.. Thanks in advance :)
--Aldric

Hi Aldric

Aldric Giacomoni wrote:
> Hey guys. First post, and I have a project which is ambitious (to me
> anyway, since this is my first foray ever in GUI).
> I want to dynamically create (from 2 arrays for instance) a table with
> rows and columns, and each ''cell'' would behave like a
checkbox, sending
> a query to a database tailored after the row/column in which it is (a
> very simple query).
Welcome to wxRuby which, happily, has a widget that I think will be very 
well suited to your project. It''s called Wx::Grid, and the
documentation
is here:

http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/grid.html

Note that there is one missing section we recently noticed in this doc, 
which describes some of the events generated by grid. Have a look also at:

http://docs.wxwidgets.org/stable/wx_wxgrid.html

There are two quite comprehensive grid samples that came with your 
wxruby installation, in <libdir>/samples/grid/. You could study these as 
an intermediary project.

Briefly, on some of the things you want to do:

- to display cells with check-box like appearance, use 
Wx::GridCellBoolRenderer and Wx::GridCellBoolEditor classes. If you find 
you don''t like the default way these work, you can also completely 
customise how cells are displayed using your own subclass of 
Wx::GridCellRenderer.

- to handle an action when a cell is checked or unchecked, set up an 
event handler on evt_grid_cell_change.

- if you already have the code that interacts with the database, an 
efficient way to link this to the GUI display can be to use 
GridTableBase. I won''t go into detail, but have a look at the sample - 
if you''re used to model/view separation this works nicely.

hth
alex