PrintBy now you probably already have a very good idea of how one can write longer and more complex Python programs including standalone programs that work outside of the ArcGIS script tool environment (for example running code from the command prompt or IPython). Functions and modules are two of the main constructs for splitting the code into smaller units and keeping it readable, manageable, and reusable. However, there is one key component of standalone programs that we have not really discussed in GEOG485 and this course so far, and that is the design and creation of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for your Python programs. These days we are all used to working with a mouse or other pointing device to interact with the different windows, buttons, and other interactive elements that make up the GUI of most of the software applications we are using. Maybe you have already wondered about how to create such GUI-based software with Python.
When writing script tools for ArcGIS, we mainly relied on the script tool dialog box provided by ArcGIS for a GUI that allows the user to provide values for the input variables of our script tool in a convenient way. In our Python code, we didn’t have to worry about the dialog box; this was all automatically taken care of by ArcGIS based on the parameters we declared for our script tool. However, even in the context of more advanced script tools, being able to create and use your own GUIs in Python can be very useful, for instance when you want to create a script tool that requires a lot of interaction with the user and additional input while the tool is being executed (an example of such a tool will be discussed later in this lesson). Therefore, it is really getting time for us to talk a bit about GUI development in general, and in Python in particular!
To create a GUI in a given programming language and for a given platform, you often can choose between different GUI libraries (also called GUI toolkits) available for that language and platform. These GUI libraries define classes and auxiliary functions that allow for creating, combining, connecting, and managing the different components of a GUI such as windows, buttons, etc. with a minimal amount of code. Often, GUI libraries are also simply referred to as GUIs, so the term can either mean a particular software library or package used for creating graphical interfaces or the concrete interface created for a particular application. Moreover, some libraries contain much more than just the GUI related classes and components. For instance, the QT5 library we are going to talk about and use later on is actually a cross-platform application development framework with support for non-GUI related things like database and network access.
A GUI library is often complemented by additional tools for supporting the creation of graphical interfaces with that library. Some languages provide a GUI library as part of their standard library, so it is directly available on all platforms the language is available for without having to install additional 3rd party packages. There also exist GUI libraries that have been made available for different languages like the already mentioned QT library that is written in C++ but can be used with a large number of different programming languages. Wrapper packages, also called bindings, make the components and functionality of the library available in the respective other programming language. In the case of QT, there exist two commonly used wrapper packages for Python, PyQT and PySide (see Section 2.5.2.1). In the following, we provide a brief overview on the main concepts and techniques related to GUI development that we encounter in most GUI libraries.