Warning
This documentation is currently under development and may be missing information.
Enaml files contain a domain-specific language for specifying a user-interface and dynamically binding and computing values based on user interaction.
A simple example of an Enaml file might look something like this:
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Copyright (c) 2012, Enthought, Inc.
# All rights reserved.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
""" An example of the `Form` widget.
A `Form` is a simple subclass of `Container` which automatically lays
out it children in two columns, neatly aligning the widget edges. If
a `Form` has an odd number of children, the last child will span both
columns. The typical use case of a `Form` alternates `Label` and `Field`
instances, but there is not restriction on the types of children used
with a form, except that they be constrainable.
"""
from enaml.layout.api import hbox
from enaml.widgets.api import Window, Form, Container, Label, Slider, Field
enamldef Main(Window):
Form:
Label:
text = 'First Name'
Field:
pass
Label:
text = 'Last Name'
Field:
pass
Label:
text = 'Age'
Container:
padding = 0
constraints = [
hbox(lbl, sldr),
lbl.v_center == sldr.v_center,
]
Label:
id: lbl
text << '%d' % sldr.value
constraints = [width == 25]
Slider:
id: sldr
Field:
placeholder = 'Odd Number Child'
On the Python side, the Enaml code can be imported using a with statement to add the Enaml import hooks. The enamldef blocks are then available as module-level functions that can be called normally from Python code. Building the UI is then a matter of calling an Enaml enamldef to build the view, and creating that view from a Session instance. The parameters passed in to the Enaml enamldef block from the Python side can be any Python or Enaml objects that would make sense to use within the Enaml code. For example, if you use an attribute of an object in the Enaml code, then passing an object without that attribute will raise an AttributeError just as if you did the same thing in a Python function.
Enaml widgets come in two basic types: Containers and Controls. Controls are conceptually single UI elements with no other Enaml widgets inside them, such as labels, fields, and buttons. Containers are widgets which contain other widgets, usually including information about how to layout the widgets that they contain. Examples of containers include top-level windows, scroll areas and forms.
Enaml uses constraints-based layout implemented by the Cassowary layout system. Constraints are specified as a system of linear inequalities together with an error function which is minimized according to a modified version of the Simplex method. The error function is specified via assigning weights to the various inequalities. The default weights exposed in Enaml are 'weak', 'medium', 'strong', 'required', and 'ignored', but other values are possible within the system, if needed. While a developer writing Enaml code could specify all constraints directly, in practice they will use a set of helper classes, functions and attributes to help specify the set of constraints in a more understandable way.
Every widget knows its preferred size, usually by querying the underlying toolkit, and can express how closely it adheres to the preferred size via its hug_width, hug_height, resist_width and resist_height attribute which take one of the previously mentioned weights. These are set to reasonable defaults for most widgets, but they can be overriden. The hug attributes specify how strongly the widget resists expansion by adding a constraint of the appropriate weight that specifies that the dimension be equal to the preferred value, while the resist_clip attributes specify how strongly the widget resists compression by adding a constraint that specifies that the dimension be greater than or equal to the preferred value.
Todo
Example here
Containers can specify additional constraints that relate their child widgets. By default a container simply lays out its children as a vertical list and tries to expand them to use the full width and height that the container has available. Layout containers, like Form, specify different default constraints that give automatic layout of their children, and may provide additional hooks for other widgets to use to align with their significant features.
Additional constraints are specified via the constraints attribute on the container. The simplest way to specify a constraint is with a simple equality or inequality. Inequalities can be specified in terms of symbols provided by the components, which at least default to the symbols for a basic box model: top, bottom, left, right, v_center, h_center, width and height. Other components may expose other symbols: for example the Form widget exposes midline for aligning the fields of multiple forms along the same line, and a Container exposes various contents symbols to accound for padding around the boundaries of its children.
Todo
Example here
However, this can get tedious, and so there are some helpers that are available to simplify specifying layout. These are:
- spacer
- A singleton spacer that represents a flexible space in a layout with a minimum value of the default space. Additional restrictions on the space can be specified using ==, <= and >= with an integer value.
- spacer.flex()
- A flexible spacer that has a hard minimum but also a weaker preference to be no larger than that minimum.
horizontal(*items) or hbox(*items)
- vertical(*items) or vbox(*items)
- These four functions take a list of symbols, widgets and spacers and create a series of constraints that specify a sequential horizontal or vertical layout where the sides of each object in sequence abut against each other.
- align(variable, *items)
- Align the given string variable name on each of the specified items.
- grid(*rows, **config)
- A function which takes a variable number of iterable rows and arranges the items in a grid according to the configuration parameters.
By using appropriate combinations of these objects you can specify complex layouts quickly and clearly.
Todo
Example here