Question

How do I get a widget’s “name”?

When I define a GUI using Glade, I can “name” the widgets of the window but how do I recover that property when I have a widget object instance?

I’ve tried get_property(), get_name() and $widget.name to no avail.

Update: I am using GtkBuilder file format (i.e. XML format).

Resolution: a fix I have used: use the set_property("name", name) method on the widget just after getting it from GtkBuilder.

Answer 1

I use the class-method form, which works for me:

gtk.Buildable.get_name(widget)

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References

PyGtk: gtk.Buildable.get_name

Gtk3: Gtk.Buildable.get_name

Quote from gtk2 GtkBuilder:

Prior to GTK+ 2.20, gtk.Builder was setting the “name” property of
constructed widgets to the “id” attribute. In GTK+ 2.20 or newer, you
have to use gtk.Buildable.get_name() instead of gtk.Widget.get_name()
to obtain the “id”, or set the “name” property in your UI definition.

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Further

There were some reported bugs where GtkBuilder sets the widget name to be the builder ID, or doesn’t set it at all. See Ubuntu and GNOME bugs. I have no idea why the bugs says that it sets the ID instead of the name as I’ve only ever seen the name not set.