How to add a pygtk Widget to the Glade palette?

Question

Say I've created a gtk Widget like this:

class AwesomeTextView (gtk.TextView):

    def set_font(self, font_description):
        self.modify_font(pango.FontDescription(font_description))

How can I add my new widget to the palette in the Glade Interface Builder?

Answer 1

Okay, this is going to be step by step:

• Our widget is going to be named AwesomeTextView, the module it's in will be called awesome_text_view. These are the only names we need.

A glade widget consists of two parts, the module and the catalog.

1. We create a catalog, awesome_text_view.xml, and (as root) save it at /usr/share/glade3/catalogs/

   This is what it looks like:

   <glade-catalog name="awesome_text_view"
       library="gladepython"
       domain="glade-3"
       depends="gtk+">
   
    <init-function>glade_python_init</init-function>
   
    <glade-widget-classes>
      <glade-widget-class title="Awesome TextView"
       name="AwesomeTextView"
       generic-name="awesome_text_view"/>
    </glade-widget-classes>
   
    <glade-widget-group name="python" title="Python">
      <glade-widget-class-ref name="AwesomeTextView"/>
    </glade-widget-group>
   </glade-catalog>
   

   You should copy and adapt this template, as it works. :-)

2. We create a module, awesome_text_view.py, and (again as root) save it at /usr/lib/glade3/modules/

   Here's what that looks like:

   import gobject
   import gtk
   import pango
   
   
   class AwesomeTextView (gtk.TextView):
   
       __gtype_name__ = 'AwesomeTextView'
   
       def __init__(self):
           gtk.TextView.__init__(self)
   
       def set_font(self, font_description):
           self.modify_font(pango.FontDescription(font_description))
   

   It's now displayed in Glade, and you can add it to your application.

3. Finally, you'll just need to

       export PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:/usr/lib/glade3/modules/"
   

That's it!

Here's a little test app showing how to use your widget:

import gtk
import awesome_text_view

class App (object):

    builder = gtk.Builder()

    def __init__(self):
        self.builder.add_from_file("test.glade")
        self.builder.connect_signals(self)
        self.builder.get_object("awesome_text_view1").set_font("mono")
        gtk.main()

    def on_window1_destroy(self, widget):
        gtk.main_quit()


App()

Answer 2

You need to make a catalog for your widgets, see this folder: /usr/share/glade3/catalogs/ and you'll see gnome.xml, have a look for an example.

See also the gnome documentation:

http://developer.gnome.org/gladeui/stable/catalogintro.html