Parameter Editor

A parameter dictionary can be edited with a ParameterEditor() widget.

See also

Parameter Tree

Here is one example.

View of a parameter dictionary using ParameterEditor

View of ParameterEditor dialog.

Full Python application to display parameters in a ParameterEditor widget

"""Parameters Editor Demo Application"""
import sys

from PyQt5 import QtWidgets
import pyQParamWidget as qpw

# build the dictionary
parameters = {
    "settings_file": qpw.ParameterItemText(
        label="settings file", value="settings.ini"
    ),
    "server": qpw.ParameterItemChoice(
        label="server URL",
        value="http://localhost",
        choices=[
            "http://localhost",
            "http://localhost.localdoman",
            "http://127.0.0.1",
        ],
    ),
    "autoconnect": qpw.ParameterItemCheckbox(
        label="Autoconnect with server?", value=True
    ),
    "catalog": qpw.ParameterItemText(label="catalog", value="my_catalog"),
    "autoopen": qpw.ParameterItemCheckbox(
        label="Auto open catalog?", value=True
    ),
}

# Show ParameterEditor in a PyQt application
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
window = qpw.ParameterEditor(None, parameters)
window.show()
print(f"{window.values()=}")
sys.exit(app.exec())

For the source code documentation, see ParameterEditor.

EXAMPLE

First, make a dictionary of ParameterItem objects. The keys of the dictionary can be strings or Python objects or any other structure allowed by Python as dictionary keys. The keys, themselves, are not used by ParameterEditor. They are only used to identify each of the ParameterItem objects.

This example defines four objects:

parameters = {
    "item1": qpw.param_item.ParameterItemText(
        "title",
        "Suggested title",
        tooltip="Set the title. Be brief."
        ),
    "item2": qpw.param_item.ParameterItemChoice(
        "gain scale",
        "10 uA/V",
        choices=["1 mA/V", "10 uA/V", "100 nA/V", "100 nA/V"],
        tooltip="Pick a gain scale.",
    ),
    "item3": qpw.param_item.ParameterItemCheckbox(
        "wait",
        True,
        tooltip="Should wait at each point?",
    ),
    "item4": qpw.param_item.ParameterItemSpinBox(
        "# of points",
        21,
        lo=2, hi=10_000,
        tooltip="How many points to collect?",
    ),
}

Next, create the ParameterEditor object, passing in the parent object (usually the QWidget object that will contain this new widget) and the parameters dictionary.

editor = ParameterEditor(parent, parameters)

Finally, add editor into parent’s layout.

Get the values from the editor widget

The widget’s values() method returns a dictionary with the accepted parameter values. The dictionary keys are the same as the parameter dictionary supplied.

editor = ParameterEditor(parent, parameters)
# ...user interaction
results = editor.values()

EXAMPLE

Using the parameters dictionary above, and making no changes in the editor window, print(results) would return:

{
    "item1": "Suggested title",
    "item2": "10 uA/V",
    "item3": True,
    "item4": 21
}

Data types

The editor attempts to report the values in the original data type as given in the dictionary of parameters.

Accept and Reset buttons

The buttons for Accept and Reset are enabled when the values in the editor are different than the supplied parameters.

Before the window can be closed, it is necessary to either Accept all changes or Reset all widgets to supplied parameters values.

View of a ParameterEditor widget with changes.

View of ParameterEditor widget with changes.

This dialog will be shown if the editor window is requested to close while changes have not been resolved.

Alert when request to close editor window with unresolved changes.

Alert message when trying to close ParameterWidget with changes.

Accept

When pressed, the Accept button updates the supplied parameters from the widgets.

Reset

When pressed, the Reset button updates the widgets from the supplied parameters.