GtkEntry change text on user input

Question

In a gui I want to modify the text a user inserts in a GtkEntry. eg if the user enters 'joHn doe', my gui should see this is not a nicely formatted name and changes this into 'John Doe'.

I connect the a handler to "changed" signal as described in eg GtkEntry text change signal. The problem that occurs is if I change the entry in my signal handler, the "changed" signal is emitted again and again until kingdom comes.

I currently prevent this by doing a string comparison, and I only change the text in the GtkEntryBuffer if the text "namified" version is unequal to the text inside the entry. However I feel like as programmer I should be able to change the the text inside the entry without that the changed handler is called over and over again.

The changed signal handler is:

void nameify_entry ( GtkEditable* editable, gpointer data )
{
    gchar* nameified;
    const gchar *entry_text;

    entry_text = gtk_entry_get_text( GTK_ENTRY(editable) );
    nameified = nameify(entry_text);

    /*is it possible to change the buffer without this using this string
      comparison, without the "change" signal being emitted over and over again?*/
    if ( g_strcmp0(entry_text, nameified) != 0 ){
        GtkEntryBuffer* buf = gtk_entry_get_buffer(GTK_ENTRY(editable) );
        gtk_entry_buffer_set_text( buf, nameified, -1 );
    }
    g_free(nameified);
}

and my nameify function is:

/*removes characters that should not belong to a name*/
gchar*
nameify ( const char* cstr )
{
    const char* c;
    gchar* ret_val;
    GString* s = g_string_new("");

    gboolean uppercase_next = TRUE;
    g_debug( "string = %s", cstr);

    for ( c = cstr; *c != '0'; c = g_utf8_next_char(c) ) {
        gunichar cp = g_utf8_get_char(c); 
        if ( cp == 0 ) break;
        if ( g_unichar_isalpha( cp ) ){
            if ( uppercase_next ){
                g_string_append_unichar( s, g_unichar_toupper(cp) );
                uppercase_next = FALSE;
            }
            else{
                g_string_append_unichar(s,g_unichar_tolower(cp));
            }
        }
        if ( cp == '-' ){
            g_string_append_unichar( s, cp);
            uppercase_next = TRUE;
        }
        if ( cp == ' '){
            g_string_append_unichar( s, cp);
            uppercase_next = TRUE;
        }
    }

    ret_val = s->str;
    g_string_free(s, FALSE);
    return ret_val;
}

any help is most welcome.

Answer 1

It's not really handy to connect to the 'changed' signal, but more appropriate to connect to the 'insert-text' signal. Even better to have the default 'insert-text' handler update the entry. Than use g_signal_connect_after on the 'insert-text' signal to update the text in the entry this prevents the changed signal to run infinitely. This should also be done to the 'delete-text' signal, because if a user deletes a capital letter, the capital should be removed and the second should be capitalized.

so on creation run:

g_signal_connect_after( entry, "insert-text", G_CALLBACK(name_insert_after), NULL );
g_signal_connect_after( entry, "delete-text", G_CALLBACK(name_delete_after), NULL );

Then you can have these signal handlers:

void
name_insert_after (GtkEditable* edit,
                   gchar* new_text,
                   gint new_length,
                   gpointer position,
                   gpointer data)
{
    /*prevent compiler warnings about unused variables*/
    (void) new_text; (void) new_length; (void) position; (void) data;
    const gchar* content = gtk_entry_get_text( GTK_ENTRY(edit) );
    gchar* modified = nameify( content);
    gtk_entry_set_text(GTK_ENTRY(edit),modified);
    g_free(modified);
}

void
name_delete_after (GtkEditable* edit,
                   gint start_pos,
                   gint end_pos,
                   gpointer data)
{
    /*no op cast to prevent compiler warnings*/
    (void) start_pos; (void) end_pos; (void) data;
    /*get text and modify the entry*/
    int cursor_pos = gtk_editable_get_position(edit);
    const gchar* content = gtk_entry_get_text( GTK_ENTRY(edit) );
    gchar* modified = nameify( content);
    gtk_entry_set_text(GTK_ENTRY(edit),modified);
    gtk_editable_set_position(edit, cursor_pos);
    g_free(modified);
}

and these can than be used with the nameify function in the original post. you might even provide a function pointer at the data instead of 'NULL' to use this one handler with different functions that are able to modify the string in the entry.