How to add a pygtk Widget to the Glade palette?

Question

Say I've created a gtk Widget like this:

class AwesomeTextView (gtk.TextView):

    def set_font(self, font_description):
        self.modify_font(pango.FontDescription(font_description))

How can I add my new widget to the palette in the Glade Interface Builder?

Answer 1

Okay, this is going to be step by step:

• Our widget is going to be named AwesomeTextView, the module it's in will be called awesome_text_view. These are the only names we need.

A glade widget consists of two parts, the module and the catalog.

1. We create a catalog, awesome_text_view.xml, and (as root) save it at /usr/share/glade3/catalogs/

   This is what it looks like:

   <glade-catalog name="awesome_text_view"
       library="gladepython"
       domain="glade-3"
       depends="gtk+">
   
    <init-function>glade_python_init</init-function>
   
    <glade-widget-classes>
      <glade-widget-class title="Awesome TextView"
       name="AwesomeTextView"
       generic-name="awesome_text_view"/>
    </glade-widget-classes>
   
    <glade-widget-group name="python" title="Python">
      <glade-widget-class-ref name="AwesomeTextView"/>
    </glade-widget-group>
   </glade-catalog>
   

   You should copy and adapt this template, as it works. :-)

2. We create a module, awesome_text_view.py, and (again as root) save it at /usr/lib/glade3/modules/

   Here's what that looks like:

   import gobject
   import gtk
   import pango
   
   
   class AwesomeTextView (gtk.TextView):
   
       __gtype_name__ = 'AwesomeTextView'
   
       def __init__(self):
           gtk.TextView.__init__(self)
   
       def set_font(self, font_description):
           self.modify_font(pango.FontDescription(font_description))
   

   It's now displayed in Glade, and you can add it to your application.

3. Finally, you'll just need to

       export PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:/usr/lib/glade3/modules/"
   

That's it!

Here's a little test app showing how to use your widget:

import gtk
import awesome_text_view

class App (object):

    builder = gtk.Builder()

    def __init__(self):
        self.builder.add_from_file("test.glade")
        self.builder.connect_signals(self)
        self.builder.get_object("awesome_text_view1").set_font("mono")
        gtk.main()

    def on_window1_destroy(self, widget):
        gtk.main_quit()


App()

Answer 2

You need to make a catalog for your widgets, see this folder: /usr/share/glade3/catalogs/ and you'll see gnome.xml, have a look for an example.

See also the gnome documentation:

http://developer.gnome.org/gladeui/stable/catalogintro.html

Answer 3

The accepted answer (dated 2011) no longer works for GTK3 in 2023. Here is what awesome_text_view.py should look like:

import gi
gi.require_version("Gtk", "3.0")
from gi.repository import GObject
from gi.repository import Gtk
from gi.repository import Pango


class AwesomeTextView (Gtk.TextView):
    __gtype_name__ = 'AwesomeTextView'

    def __init__(self):
        Gtk.TextView.__init__(self)

    def set_font(self, font_description):
        self.modify_font(Pango.FontDescription(font_description))

No change is required to be made to the catalogue. And there is no need to copy files to system paths, which you may not have access to anyway. Instead use the environment variables GLADE_CATALOG_SEARCH_PATH and GLADE_MODULE_SEARCH_PATH before launching glade like so

GLADE_CATALOG_SEARCH_PATH=/path/to/awesome_widget/catalogue GLADE_MODULE_SEARCH_PATH=/path/to/awesome_widget/modules glade

Finally, save awesome_text_view.py in the directory /path/to/awesome_widget/modules/