Animate spinner with thread pygtk

Question

i am trying to animate a spinner while the programm is running but i can't. I tried using threads but i can't get what i want...you can look here for the progress i made http://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntuappshowdown/comments/vvyav/problem_with_spinner/

i get the spinner to animate but the program stops running...

Answer 1

Keep following 2 tips in mind when using threads and PyGTK:

• Make sure to call GObject.threads_init() as soon as possible in your program to enable threading in your PyGTK app.

• If you are doing any GUI tasks in your thread, wrap it inside GObject.idle_add(callable), always.

Here is a full working example, adapt to your code as needed:

import time
import threading

from gi.repository import Gtk, GObject
GObject.threads_init() # Don' forget!


class WorkerThread(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, callback):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.callback = callback

    def run(self):
        # Simulate a long process, do your actual work here
        time.sleep(4)

        # The callback runs a GUI task, so wrap it!
        GObject.idle_add(self.callback)


class MyWindow(Gtk.Window):
    def __init__(self):
        Gtk.Window.__init__(self)
        self.connect('delete-event', Gtk.main_quit)
        self.resize(400, 400)

        vbox = Gtk.VBox()

        button = Gtk.Button("Let's spin!")
        button.connect('clicked', self.on_button_clicked)
        vbox.pack_start(button, False, False, 0)

        self.spinner = Gtk.Spinner()
        vbox.pack_start(self.spinner, True, True, 0)
        self.add(vbox)
        self.show_all()

    def on_button_clicked(self, widget):
        self.spinner.start()
        thread = WorkerThread(self.work_finished_cb)
        thread.start()

    def work_finished_cb(self):
        self.spinner.stop()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = MyWindow()
    Gtk.main()

Answer 2

I saw your question yesterday on reddit as well.

When I tried to use threads in python and gtk, it took me like one night to figure it out.

In the end it was as simple as

GObject.threads_init()
Gdk.threads_init()

in the beginning and then spawn threads like you normally would in python with something like

watch_thread = Thread(target=self.function)
watch_thread.daemon = True
watch_thread.start()

I have no idea if that helps you. But I do hope so. I will also take a look at your code and might edit my answer afterwards :)