Associate image name with list item

[Kevin Walzer]

I'm trying to avoid a *lot* of typing in my Tkinter application by
associating image names with items in a list. Here is my sample list:

self.catlist = [
'all', 'installed', 'base', 'crypto', 'database', 'devel',
'editors', 'games', 'gnome', 'graphics', 'kde', 'languages',
'libs', 'libs_perlmods',
'libs_pythonmods', 'libs_rubymods', 'net', 'sci', 'shells',
'sound', 'text', 'web',
'x11_system', 'x11-wm', 'x11'
]

I've also already created a bunch of images with names that correspond
to the list above, i.e. self.all, self.installed, and so on. Here's the
rest of my code:

for item in self.catlist:
print item
self.categorytable.insert(END, item)
self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.item)

This yields the following error:

AttributeError: item

because, of course, I don't actually have an image called self.item.

What I'm trying to do is get the value of the variable "item" and plug
it into the image name, so that self.item actually corresponds to
self.installed, self.base, etc. Trying something like

self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.%s % item)

just yields a syntax error: SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com

[John McMonagle]

Kevin Walzer wrote:

I'm trying to avoid a *lot* of typing in my Tkinter application by
associating image names with items in a list. Here is my sample list:

self.catlist = [
'all', 'installed', 'base', 'crypto', 'database', 'devel',
'editors', 'games', 'gnome', 'graphics', 'kde', 'languages',
'libs', 'libs_perlmods',
'libs_pythonmods', 'libs_rubymods', 'net', 'sci', 'shells',
'sound', 'text', 'web',
'x11_system', 'x11-wm', 'x11'
]

I've also already created a bunch of images with names that correspond
to the list above, i.e. self.all, self.installed, and so on. Here's the
rest of my code:

for item in self.catlist:
print item
self.categorytable.insert(END, item)
self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.item)

This yields the following error:

AttributeError: item

because, of course, I don't actually have an image called self.item.

What I'm trying to do is get the value of the variable "item" and plug
it into the image name, so that self.item actually corresponds to
self.installed, self.base, etc. Trying something like

self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.%s % item)

just yields a syntax error: SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Create a dictionary mapping the name to the image object. For example:

# Create all your images first

# Map a name to the image object
self.catdict = {'all' : self.all, 'installed' : self.installed, .......}

# Loop over the image names and do your stuff
for item in self.catdict.keys():
print item
self.categorytable.insert(END, item)
self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0",image=sel f.catDict.get(item))

Regards,

John

[Peter Otten]

Kevin Walzer wrote:

I'm trying to avoid a *lot* of typing in my Tkinter application by
associating image names with items in a list. Here is my sample list:

self.catlist = [
'all', 'installed', 'base', 'crypto', 'database', 'devel',
'editors', 'games', 'gnome', 'graphics', 'kde', 'languages',
'libs', 'libs_perlmods',
'libs_pythonmods', 'libs_rubymods', 'net', 'sci', 'shells',
'sound', 'text', 'web',
'x11_system', 'x11-wm', 'x11'
]

I've also already created a bunch of images with names that correspond
to the list above, i.e. self.all, self.installed, and so on. Here's the
rest of my code:

for item in self.catlist:
print item
self.categorytable.insert(END, item)
self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.item)

This yields the following error:

AttributeError: item

because, of course, I don't actually have an image called self.item.

What I'm trying to do is get the value of the variable "item" and plug
it into the image name, so that self.item actually corresponds to
self.installed, self.base, etc. Trying something like

self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=self.%s % item)

just yields a syntax error: SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

The way you have framed your question the direct answer is

self.categorytable.cellconfigure("end,0", image=getattr(self, item))

but I think not making the images attributes and using a dictionary is the
superior approach. You avoid name clashes between image names and program
logic, and you can easily deal with image names that are not valid
attribute names (like 'x11-wm').

Peter