How to make a wxFrame behave like a modal wxDialog object

Question

Is is possible to make a wxFrame object behave like a modal dialog box in that the window creating the wxFrame object stops execution until the wxFrame object exits?

Answer 1

Not sure this is a great answer but it worked.

bool WinApp1::OnInit()
{
  if (!wxApp::OnInit())
    return false;

  SettingsDialog dialog(m_settingsData);
  dialog.ShowModal();

  return false;
}

SettingsDialog::SettingsDialog(SettingsData& settingsData)
  : m_settingsData(settingsData)
{
  SetExtraStyle(wxDIALOG_EX_CONTEXTHELP);

  wxWindow* parent = nullptr;
  Create(parent, wxID_ANY, "Preferences", wxDefaultPosition, wxDefaultSize,
    wxDEFAULT_DIALOG_STYLE | wxRESIZE_BORDER);

The WinApp1 window is never given a wxFrame and never paints.

Answer 2

It does not really make sense to "stop execution" of a window, as the window only handles events that are sent to it, like for example mouse, keyboard or paint events, and ignoring them would make the program appear hung. What you should do is disable all controls in your frame, this will gray them out and make the user aware of the fact that they can not be interacted with at this moment.

You can also disable the parent frame completely, instead of disabling all controls on it. Look into the wxWindowDisabler class, the constructor has a parameter to indicate a window that can be interacted with, and all other windows of the application will be disabled.

If you later on want to execute a secondary program, then you could use the wxExecute() function to do it.

Answer 3

I was also looking from similar solution and have comeup with this solution, create a frame, disable other windows by doing frame.MakeModal() and to stop execution start and event loop after showing frame, and when frame is closed exit the event loop e.g. I here is sample using wxpython but it should be similar in wxwidgets.

import wx

class ModalFrame(wx.Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent, title):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, title=title, style=wx.DEFAULT_FRAME_STYLE|wx.STAY_ON_TOP)

        btn = wx.Button(self, label="Close me")
        btn.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.onClose)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.onClose) # (Allows main window close to work)

    def onClose(self, event):
        self.MakeModal(False) # (Re-enables parent window)
        self.eventLoop.Exit()
        self.Destroy() # (Closes window without recursion errors)

    def ShowModal(self):
        self.MakeModal(True) # (Explicit call to MakeModal)
        self.Show()

        # now to stop execution start a event loop 
        self.eventLoop = wx.EventLoop()
        self.eventLoop.Run()


app = wx.PySimpleApp()
frame = wx.Frame(None, title="Test Modal Frame")
btn = wx.Button(frame, label="Open modal frame")

def onclick(event):
    modalFrame = ModalFrame(frame, "Modal Frame")
    modalFrame.ShowModal()
    print "i will get printed after modal close"

btn.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, onclick)

frame.Show()
app.SetTopWindow(frame)
app.MainLoop()

Answer 4

This took me an annoying amount of time to figure out but here is a working example that grew out of Anurag's example:

import wx

class ChildFrame(wx.Frame):
    ''' ChildFrame launched from MainFrame '''
    def __init__(self, parent, id):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, -1,
                          title=self.__class__.__name__,
                          size=(300,150))

        panel = wx.Panel(self, -1)
        closeButton = wx.Button(panel, label="Close Me")

        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.__onClose, id=closeButton.GetId())
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.__onClose) # (Allows frame's title-bar close to work)

        self.CenterOnParent()
        self.GetParent().Enable(False)
        self.Show(True)

        self.__eventLoop = wx.EventLoop()
        self.__eventLoop.Run()

    def __onClose(self, event):
        self.GetParent().Enable(True)
        self.__eventLoop.Exit()
        self.Destroy()

class MainFrame(wx.Frame):
    ''' Launches ChildFrame when button is clicked. '''
    def __init__(self, parent, id):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, id,
                          title=self.__class__.__name__,
                          size=(400, 300))

        panel = wx.Panel(self, -1)
        launchButton = wx.Button(panel, label="launch modal window")

        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.__onClick, id=launchButton.GetId())

        self.Centre()
        self.Show(True)

    def __onClick(self, event):
        dialog = ChildFrame(self, -1)
        print "I am printed by MainFrame and get printed after ChildFrame is closed"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = wx.App()    
    frame = MainFrame(None, -1)
    frame.Show()
    app.MainLoop()