[chimera-dev] Programming a Table

[Eric Pettersen]

On Nov 3, 2010, at 8:22 AM, Elisabeth Ortega wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I'm trying to do a script that shows in a table an array of numerical
> values.
> One little script that shows what I'm trying to do is:
>
> from chimera import runCommand as run
>
> run("sel")
> b=[]
> for a in chimera.selection.currentAtoms():
>    b=a.serialNumber
>
> from CGLtk.Table import SortableTable
>
> t=SortableTable(b)
> t.addColumn("serial", "Serial", format=None)
> t.setData(b)
> t.launch()
>
> With this little script I'm trying to show in a column of the table  
> the
> serial number of the atoms of my system.

Hi Elisabeth,
	You've done a lot of things right here, but a few important things  
wrong.  One is that a Table can't be created in isolation; it has to  
be part of a window.  The simplest way to create a window is to use  
the ModelessDialog class from chimera.baseDialog, like this:

from chimera.baseDialog import ModelessDialog
class MyDialog(ModelessDialog):
	def fillInUI(self, parent):
		# code to create table in here...

MyDialog()

[FYI, it's a "modeless" dialog because the user can interact with  
other parts of Chimera while the dialog is shown (as opposed to a  
"modal" dialog where the user must respond to it before doing anything  
else in Chimera)]

The second problem in your code is that the first argument to  
SortableTable should be the window or frame that it is to be placed  
in.  The "parent" argument to the fillInUI method above is the frame  
in the dialog window that widgets (like your SortableTable) should be  
placed in.  So the code to create the table is:

	t = SortableTable(parent)

The third problem with the code is that the argument to the setData  
method should be a list of some sort but your code does a  
"b=a.serialNumber" which makes b an integer, not a list.  Another  
problem is that the arguments to addColumn are the column title and  
how to get the data value from an item, the latter of which should  
either be an attribute name or a function that takes an item as its  
argument.  Since you are supplying a list of integers, the addColumn  
call would be:

	t.addColumn("Serial", int, format="%d")

or:

	t.addColumn("Serial", str)

Both 'int' and 'str' are Python built-in functions for conversion to  
integer or string.

The final problem with the code is that you need to call the grid()  
method on the table so that it gets shown (there are row/column  
arguments to grid() for positioning widgets relative to each other in  
a single frame, but since you only have one widget [the table] you can  
call grid() with no arguments).

The last thing, which isn't an error per se, is that I think it would  
be better if the data given to the table were a list of atoms, rather  
than a list of atom serial numbers.  That way the table could display  
additional columns of information (such as atom name) rather than  
being restricted to just showing serial numbers.

Here's what I think your code should look like:

import chimera
from chimera.baseDialog import ModelessDialog
class TableDialog(ModelessDialog):
	def fillInUI(self, parent):
		from CGLtk.Table import SortableTable
		t = SortableTable(parent)
		# str(atom) will return something like "ALA 59 A", so use str()  
func...
		t.addColumn("Name", str)
		t.addColumn("Serial", "serialNumber", format="%d")
		from chimera import runCommand as run
		run("sel")
		t.setData(chimera.selection.currentAtoms())
		t.launch()
		# the 'sticky' arg controls resize behavior,
		# with "nsew" the table will enlarge (or shrink)
		# as the dialog is resized
		t.grid(sticky="nsew")

TableDialog()

	Finally, there is more detail about how ModelessDialogs work in the  
"Extension-Specific User Interface" programmer's example at Example  
FrameSet

--Eric

                         Eric Pettersen
                         UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
                         http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu

> But when I execute that, I got a
> message in the Python Shell that says:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "/home/eortega/intento-tabla.py", line 11, in <module>
>    t=SortableTable(b)
>  File "CHIMERA/share/CGLtk/Table.py", line 489, in __init__
>  File "CHIMERA/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 2442, in  
> __init__
>    Widget.__init__(self, master, 'frame', cnf, {}, extra)
>  File "CHIMERA/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1923, in  
> __init__
>    BaseWidget._setup(self, master, cnf)
>  File "CHIMERA/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1901, in _setup
>    self.tk = master.tk
> AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'tk'
>
> And I don't understand it. How can I build successfully my table?




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