.NET Information center: A skinned dialog in Python and MFC

Introduction
By following MVC, you can create beautiful skinned UIs and write the logic parts of your program in Python very easily.

Background
When I first thought up this program, I used tkinter in python. However it was difficult to make a beautiful window using tkinter. Using tkinter is more like using Swing in Java. And at that time, I was not very familiar with Python. So I decided to make an MFC skinned UI which communicates with python. This was almost 7 years ago. After making a small app, I left the code on my hard disk. Recently, I was using a dropbox and I realized that the dropbox was made in python. The dropbox reminded me of this code. So I am posting it here on CodeProject. I am not sure it might help others who think like me, but I hope so.
Using the code

This program consists of three parts: XML script for the skin, the Python script for actually executing the program, and the MFC DLL for creating a skinned dialog and passing the user action to the Python script.

The XML script for the skin:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <brandnewui>
        <info>
            information about this skin...
        </info>
        <resource>
            <bitmap id="bmp" file="HelloWorld.bmp"/>
            resources...
            <icon id="icon" file="HelloWorld.ico"/>
        </resource>
        <window id="hello" type="cwnd">
            <position x="150" y="150" width="292" height="171"/>
            <bgcolor color="0x00000"/>
            <icon id="icon"/>
            <region/>
            <alwaystop/>
            <magnetic/>
            <opacity value="80"/>
            <move x="0" y="0" width="292" height="25"/>

            actuall control's position and properties...
            <emcontrol id="bg" type="pic">
                <position x="0" y="0" width="292" height="171"/>
                <background id="bmp"/>
                <region/>
            </emcontrol>

</window>
</brandnewui>

The XML skin is intuitive and does not need a description. The things you should remember are the window tag and the window ID. Because Python script will send a message to a window using the ID property as an identifier of the window.
Python script:

    ## import modules
    import win32api, win32con, win32gui
    import win32ui
    import win32con
    import string
    from ctypes import *
    from BrandNewUI import *

    ## Skin Window Message Procedure
    def SkinWndProc(str):
        operator = string.split(str.value,"/")
        ## pressed off
        if operator[0] == "btn_close":
            HelloWorld.SendSkinMessage("wndmgr","cls","hello")
            HelloWorld.FinalSkin()
            EndPumpMessage()
        pass

Read more: Codeproject
QR: python_MFC_UI.aspx

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Monday, July 25, 2011

A skinned dialog in Python and MFC