More About ConfigTreeView

The ConfigTreeView is an implementation of GtkTreeView that has its widgets, their properties, and attributes set via a configuration structure. Because of the nature and design of this config structure, a very simple, intuitive, and flexible data model has been created that both define the look and feel of the treeview, but also explicitly detail the shape and look of the data that the ConfigTreeView is expecting.

The ConfigTreeView‘s data model is indirectly defined in the index-names key in the config structure. This key has a dictionary as its value that looks something like this:

{
  'cell-bg-index': bool,
  'market':{'pixbuf': "gtk.gdk.Pixbuf"},
  'status':[{'markup':str},{'markup':str}],
  'name':{'markup':str},
  'address':{'markup':str},
  'contact':{'markup':str},
  'payment':[{'markup':str}, {'markup':str}],
  'shipping':{'markup':str},
  'comments':{'markup':str},
  'placed':{'markup':str},
  'id': str,
}

Each inner-level key represents a new index of the defined type in a data row that will eventually be inserted into a GtkTreeModel.

The Data Model

The ConfigTreeView data model refers to what structure the incoming data must look like in order for the data to be properly formatted and displayed. The data model is indirectly defined by the index-names dictionary defined in the configuration structure. What this means is that the index-names dictionary is also the same structure that the data model should follow, replacing the types that were defined for the actual values at that particular index. An example data structure for a single row of data following the data model defined above:

{
  'cell-bg-index': True,
  'market':{'pixbuf': "/images/market1.png"},
  'status':[{'markup': "Current Status"},{'markup': "Shipped"}],
  'name':{'markup': "Darth Vader"},
  'address':{'markup': "The Death Star"},
  'contact':{'markup': "867-5309"},
  'payment':[{'markup': "Visa"}, {'markup': "$100.00"}],
  'shipping':{'markup': "Shipped"},
  'comments':{'markup': "No comments"},
  'placed':{'markup': "2012-06-19 12:08:33PM"},
  'id': "123435252335",
}

But the data model also is a little more flexible than this. There may come a time when you don’t want to display all information for a row. With this data model you only need to define the indices that you plan on using. So a more minimal row of data could look like this:

{
  'name': {'markup': "Darth Vader"},
  'address': {'markup': "The Death Star"},
  'status': [{'markup': "Current Status"}, {'markup': "Shipped"}]
}