Question

How could I set up the text of a combobox without knowing its id? I have a combobox populated with a list of name (‘Jack’,’Emily’,’Paul’,…). By default, the combo is set on -1 but I want it to be set on “Paul”.

Here is my code to declare and populate the combo with tuple (id,fabName) :

    self.cmbFabricant = builder.get_object("cmbFabricant")
    self.cmbFabricant.set_model(lstStore)
    self.cmbFabricant.set_entry_text_column(1)

Now, I’d like to set the combobox on the item called “Paul”. I thought I could write :

    self.cmbFabricant.set_active_id('Paul')

I was wrong.

Answer 1

I could be wrong, but I think set_active_id is new in GTK+ 3, and PyGTK is GTK+ 2. If you want to use GTK+ 3, you have to switch to PyGObject.

But if you’re stuck on PyGTK, you can easily work around it by doing something like this:

import gtk

def set_active_name(combobox, col, name):
    liststore = combobox.get_model()
    for i in xrange(len(liststore)):
        row = liststore[i]
        if row[col] == name:
            combobox.set_active(i)

window = gtk.Window()
window.connect("destroy", gtk.main_quit)

liststore = gtk.ListStore(int, str)
liststore.append([0, 'Jack'])
liststore.append([1, 'Emily'])
liststore.append([2, 'Paul'])

combobox = gtk.ComboBox()
cell = gtk.CellRendererText()
combobox.pack_start(cell)
combobox.add_attribute(cell, 'text', 1)
combobox.set_model(liststore)

set_active_name(combobox, 1, 'Paul')

window.add(combobox)
window.show_all()

gtk.main()

I’m not sure if there is a more elegant/efficient way, but this works at least.