How to make Python identify GUI buttons by their label

[Christopher Tom]

The contractor we hired told us that Python can only recognize GUI objects, specifically buttons, by their ID. This is very inconvenient and hard to work with as the button IDs change a lot between builds. Instead, I want to reference a button by its label like "Save", "Preview", or "Submit." Does anyone know how I can accomplish this?

We use ActiveState ActivePython 2.6.4.8 (32 bit), wxPython 2.8.10.1, and PyScripter 2.3.3.

Thx in advance,
Christopher

[bvdet]

I would say your contractor may be right, assuming he means assigning the GUI object to a descriptive identifier instead of the literal ID (masterframe vs. .18497168). I don't know much about wxPython though. In Tkinter, you can access the widgets of a master widget with widget method winfo_children(), iterate on the GUI objects, access each object's options dictionary with configure() and look for a text attribute with the appropriate value. That seems like too much work to me.

Maybe you should consider refactoring your code so it would be easier to maintain between builds.

[Mariostg]

That is pretty much how WxPython works. Check the Window Identifier (A button is a Window in WxPython)section at http://zetcode.com/wxpython/events/ to get a better idea.
There is a method GetID() that allows to retreive the id of widgets. So I don't know how that would be a show stopper. There are also standard identifiers like WX_EXIT, EX_SAVE.
Ultimately, you can always map your labels to their ID in a dictionary. But I would let WxPython do its business logic...