How to make a wxFrame behave like a modal wxDialog object

Question

Is is possible to make a wxFrame object behave like a modal dialog box in that the window creating the wxFrame object stops execution until the wxFrame object exits?

I'm working on a small game and have run into the following problem. I have a main program window that hosts the main application (strategic portion). Occasionally, I need to transfer control to a second window for resolution of part of the game (tactical portion). While in the second window, I want the processing in the first window to stop and wait for completion of the work being done in the second window.

Normally a modal dialog would do the trick but I want the new window to have some functionality that I can't seem to get with a wxDialog, namely a status bar at the bottom and the ability to resize/maximize/minimize the window (this should be possible but doesn't work, see this question How to get the minimize and maximize buttons to appear on a wxDialog object).

As an addition note, I want the second window's functionality needs to stay completely decoupled from the primary window as it will be spun off into a separate program eventually.

Has anyone done this or have any suggestions?

Answer 1

I was also looking from similar solution and have comeup with this solution, create a frame, disable other windows by doing frame.MakeModal() and to stop execution start and event loop after showing frame, and when frame is closed exit the event loop e.g. I here is sample using wxpython but it should be similar in wxwidgets.

import wx

class ModalFrame(wx.Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent, title):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, title=title, style=wx.DEFAULT_FRAME_STYLE|wx.STAY_ON_TOP)

        btn = wx.Button(self, label="Close me")
        btn.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.onClose)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.onClose) # (Allows main window close to work)

    def onClose(self, event):
        self.MakeModal(False) # (Re-enables parent window)
        self.eventLoop.Exit()
        self.Destroy() # (Closes window without recursion errors)

    def ShowModal(self):
        self.MakeModal(True) # (Explicit call to MakeModal)
        self.Show()

        # now to stop execution start a event loop 
        self.eventLoop = wx.EventLoop()
        self.eventLoop.Run()


app = wx.PySimpleApp()
frame = wx.Frame(None, title="Test Modal Frame")
btn = wx.Button(frame, label="Open modal frame")

def onclick(event):
    modalFrame = ModalFrame(frame, "Modal Frame")
    modalFrame.ShowModal()
    print "i will get printed after modal close"

btn.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, onclick)

frame.Show()
app.SetTopWindow(frame)
app.MainLoop()

Answer 2

It does not really make sense to "stop execution" of a window, as the window only handles events that are sent to it, like for example mouse, keyboard or paint events, and ignoring them would make the program appear hung. What you should do is disable all controls in your frame, this will gray them out and make the user aware of the fact that they can not be interacted with at this moment.

You can also disable the parent frame completely, instead of disabling all controls on it. Look into the wxWindowDisabler class, the constructor has a parameter to indicate a window that can be interacted with, and all other windows of the application will be disabled.

If you later on want to execute a secondary program, then you could use the wxExecute() function to do it.

Answer 3

This took me an annoying amount of time to figure out but here is a working example that grew out of Anurag's example:

import wx

class ChildFrame(wx.Frame):
    ''' ChildFrame launched from MainFrame '''
    def __init__(self, parent, id):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, -1,
                          title=self.__class__.__name__,
                          size=(300,150))

        panel = wx.Panel(self, -1)
        closeButton = wx.Button(panel, label="Close Me")

        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.__onClose, id=closeButton.GetId())
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.__onClose) # (Allows frame's title-bar close to work)

        self.CenterOnParent()
        self.GetParent().Enable(False)
        self.Show(True)

        self.__eventLoop = wx.EventLoop()
        self.__eventLoop.Run()

    def __onClose(self, event):
        self.GetParent().Enable(True)
        self.__eventLoop.Exit()
        self.Destroy()

class MainFrame(wx.Frame):
    ''' Launches ChildFrame when button is clicked. '''
    def __init__(self, parent, id):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, id,
                          title=self.__class__.__name__,
                          size=(400, 300))

        panel = wx.Panel(self, -1)
        launchButton = wx.Button(panel, label="launch modal window")

        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.__onClick, id=launchButton.GetId())

        self.Centre()
        self.Show(True)

    def __onClick(self, event):
        dialog = ChildFrame(self, -1)
        print "I am printed by MainFrame and get printed after ChildFrame is closed"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = wx.App()    
    frame = MainFrame(None, -1)
    frame.Show()
    app.MainLoop()