Quickly Widget Dating

Earlier this summer I started some work on DictionaryGrid and GridFilter in order to make them easier to use in apps like PyTask.

Well, tonight I decided to finish what I started and get this stuff into trunk. Specifically, I wanted to have a DateFilter to go with DateColumn. I wanted to use a Calendar widget for users to select dates, instead of typing them in.

Before I could do that, I had to do some heavy refactoring in GridFilter. I originally made the simplifying assumption that users would enter text into an entry field to enter their values. The only exception was CheckFilter, which needed no gtk.Entry, but I just put in a small hack to make that work. So, this simplifying assumption meant that I could deliver grid filters really fast, but now it was time refactor so I could add new features.

Fortunately, it seems that I had started that and was well on the way, so I only had to finish a few things out for the refactoring. I had even already implemented CheckFilter in the new structure, so it was a simple matter to copy that pattern to get to the DateFilter working.

It's always an odd feeling when I am working with code that I had written a while back. There's a certain amount of detective work involved, "how did I go about making this all work?" There's a strange familiarity, but yet it's similar to debugging someone else's code. It's nice when I figure it out, especially when I think "that's just how I would have done it."

I also found a rather serious bug in CouchGrid along the way. So I stopped off and spent some time fixing CouchGrid, and adding test to make sure I don't see that bug again. The code slightly improved while I was in there, making sure that the grid doesn't have to render itself multiple times when it's initializing.

Anyway, I'm really happy to have made some progress on Quickly Widgets again. It was really fun and relaxing. Time well spent this evening.