Programmatically close gtk window

Question

If you have a sub-window in GTK and you want to close it programmatically (e.g., pressing a save button or the escape key), is there a preferred way to close the window?

E.g.,

window.destroy()
# versus
window.emit('delete-event')

Answer 1

Using destroy method doesn't work as expected, as the 'delete-event' callbacks are not called on the destroyed window, thus a editor, for example, won't have a chance to ask the user if the file has to be saved.

[3|zap@zap|~]python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Jul 24 2012, 10:05:38) 
[GCC 4.7.0 20120507 (Red Hat 4.7.0-5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import gtk
>>> w = gtk.Window()
>>> w.show()
>>> def cb(w,e):
...   print "cb", w, e
...   return True
... 
>>> w.connect ('delete-event', cb)
>>> w.destroy()

In the above example invoking w.destroy() won't invoke the callback, while clicking on the "close" button will invoke it (and window won't close because callback returned True).

Thus, you have to both emit the signal and then destroy the widget, if signal handlers returned False, e.g:

if not w.emit("delete-event", gtk.gdk.Event(gtk.gdk.DELETE)):
  w.destroy()