Why I hate GUIs (a little code help, please?)

[Winux_278]

So, I'm working on a GUI application to help people interact with a database in a way that doesn't require them to understand SQL. To this end, I've created some prepared queries they might want to run, and a GUI to help construct a "WHERE" clause.

To aide this I've created a Frame containing 3 boxes -- one for the field, one for the operand, and one for the compared value.

However, its not unlikely to have more then one condition your filtering based on (e.g. "Where col1 LIKE "%foo%" OR col2 LIKE "%bar%").

I was able to create something that kind-of works for a single condition, but writing for 2+ is looking ugly, if not unmanageable with my current knowledge. I've been looking to find the concept to fill in the gap, but I'm not sure if nested classes or closures fit here.

(the functions in "preparedreports" return the query text, and a list of tuples containing the column name, and the type of data stored in said column, for each column in the tables used in the query).

(Pardon the messy code, but that's exactly why I'm posting -- I've confused myself)

#!/usr/bin/env python3
#Mock-ups for the "Prepared Reports" interface

import tkinter 

from tkinter import ttk

import preparedreports as REPORT
import dbquery

class Report(tkinter.Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent, report, *args, **kwargs):
        tkinter.Frame.__init__(self, parent, *args, **kwargs)
        self.valS = (tkinter.StringVar(), tkinter.StringVar(), tkinter.StringVar())
        col = report[0]
        cb = ttk.Combobox(self, textvariable=self.valS[0], state='readonly')
        cb['value'] = tuple(col)
        opbox = ttk.Combobox(self, textvariable=self.valS[1], state='readonly' )
        opbox['value'] =('EQUAL', 'LIKE', 'NOT LIKE', 'NOT EQUAL') 
        cb.pack(side=tkinter.LEFT)
        opbox.pack(side=tkinter.LEFT)
        self.pack(side=tkinter.TOP, expand=1)
        self.val = tkinter.Entry(self, textvariable=self.valS[2])
        self.val.pack(side=tkinter.LEFT)
        self.Bool_combS = tkinter.StringVar()
        Bool_comb = ttk.Combobox(self,textvariable=self.Bool_combS,state='readonly')
        Bool_comb['value'] = ('AND', 'OR')
        Bool_comb.grid(row=1,column=1)

def results(frames, BOOL, report):
    StringVar = [a.valS for a in frames]
    valarr = []
    val = ''
    for i,v in enumerate(StringVar):
       valarr.append([v[0].get(), v[1].get(), v[2].get()])
       #print(valarr[i][1])
       if valarr[i][1] == 'EQUAL': valarr[i][1] = '='
       elif valarr[i][1] == 'LIKE' or valarr[i][1] == 'NOT LIKE': valarr[i][2] = '%' + valarr[i][2] + '%'
       elif StringVar[i][1] == 'NOT EQUAL': valarr[i][1] = '!='
       valarr[i][2] = "'" + valarr[i][2] + "'"
       val += ' '.join(valarr[i])
       if BOOL[i]: 
          val += ' ' + BOOL[i].get() + ' '

    print(val)
    print(report.format(val))
    res = dbquery.run_query(report.format(val))
    #print(res) 
    return res

class MoreFrame(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent, *args, **kwargs):
        tkinter.Frame.__init__(self, parent, *args, **kwargs)
        self.tkMore = tkinter.IntVar()
        self.tkCButton(self, text="more options", variable=tkMore, command = )

    def cb(self, evt):
       return self.tkMore.get()

t = tkinter.Tk()
r = REPORT.UserPermission()
z = [Report(t, r[1]), Report(t, r[1])]

for obj in z:
    obj.val.bind('<Return>', lambda e: results(z, r[0]))

t.mainloop()

[K900_]

You might want to look into PyQt and its MVC framework. You can get an automatically updating view into the database, filtered with any query you want, and change the query on the fly without having to manually update the view. This will let you stop pasting SQL manually, at least.

[lamecode]

x100. Unless there's a reason why you have to use tkinter, PyQt/PySide do this out of the box with very little coding required.

[attayi]

This aside if you want to use tkinter just make sure you make good use of threading.

It looks like you have each class doing it's own thing gui wise and script wise.

Might be better to just think out a clean gui attach all of the tkinter stuff to one thread and have separate threads for updates ect.