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wxCrafter

About

wxCrafter is a RAD plugin for developing wxWidgets UI applications. You should have a basic knowledge of wxWidgets. See here and here for some information on wxWidgets. In this tutorial, we will create a simple wxDialog with a "Hello World" button and connect an event to it.

Hello World

  • Create an empty workspace from File → New → New Workspace
  • Select C++
  • Set the workspace path and name and click Ok
  • Right click on the workspace and select New → New Project
  • Set the project category to GUI
  • Set the project name wxCrafterDemo
  • Set the project type to wxWidgets GUI Application (wxFrame using wxCrafter)
  • Click Ok
  • Right click on the newly added project, open the settings dialog and mark this project as GUI from Project Settings -> General -> This program is a GUI application wxCrafter project

generated files

The following table gives a brief description about the generated files:

File name Description
main.cpp The application code (derived from wxApp)
MainDialog.cpp / h The inherited code for the dialog. This is where you should place your code
wxcrafter.cpp The generated code by wxCrafter - you should not modify anything in this file as it will be overwritten by wxCrafter
wxcrafter_bitmaps.cpp The bitmaps code. wxCrafter converts every bitmap selected in the designer into C++ code so they will be available during runtime
wxcrafter.wxcp This is the wxCrafter designer file. Double-clicking it will open it in an editor
  • Double click on the wxcrafter.wxcp file, this will open the designer

wxcrafter designer

Now, what we would like to do is:

  • Add a button
  • Connect an event to the button so when the button is clicked, we will be prompted with Hello world message

Since controls can only be placed inside sizers:

  • Right click m_mainPanel entry from the tree view and select Add Sizer → wxBoxSizer

add sizer

  • Select the newly added sizer, this tells wxCrafter where to add new controls
  • From the main view, Select the Designer → Controls tab, and click on the wxButton button

add button

  • Expand the button so it will capture the entire m_mainPanel area:
    • Select the button in the tree view (by simply clicking it)
    • Clicking on both the Set sizer proportion to 1 and Expand Item buttons (see screenshot below)

Expand

  • Select the button and add function for the wxEVT_COMMAND_BUTTON_CLICKED named OnButtonClicked

add handler

  • Save everything and click on the grey cog button to generate the code

generate code

  • Open the file MainFrame.cpp within CodeLite
  • You should see a new function added at the bottom with this code:
void MainFrame::OnButtonClicked(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
}
  • Change it to
void MainFrame::OnButtonClicked(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
    wxUnusedVar(event);
    wxMessageBox("Hello World");
}

and add this include somewhere to the top of this file:

#include <wx/msgdlg.h>
  • Build the project by clicking F7
  • Run the project Ctrl+F5
  • Clicking on the button displays the Hello World message box

hello world

Project settings

When selecting the root item in the tree view of wxCrafter, you can alter the various wxCrafter project settings

Property name Description
Output directory this tells wxCrafter where to place the generated files. If the path set is relative, it will be relative to the current wxcp file
Output File Name the name of the file to use for the base classes. By default, it will use the base name of the current wxcp file
Additional Include Files provide a list of files that should be included in the generated files. The format is "MyFile.h";"AnotherHeader.h"
Bitmaps File Set here the name of the file for the project bitmaps. wxCrafter converts all selected bitmap files into a C array and embed them into the executable. This file contains these arrays
Generate Window ID When setting this to True, wxCrafter will treat any unrecognized Window ID as a enumerator and will place it as member of the relevant class. So if you set a Window ID for a control to be something like ID_MY_BUTTON, wxCrafter will create an enum with ID_MY_BUTTON as one of its enumerators
First Window ID The initial value for the Window ID enum
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