tk widget options stored in hash

glenn has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

So i'm trying to make my GUI look better and although i could put into every widget "-background => $color{lbl}[0], -foreground => $color{lbl}[0]" using an hash of arrays i would like to store all these in a hash so that if some have an active fg/bg colors as well it's all the same and alot cleaner, ultimately i could put all options in the hash. Has anybody tried to do this? I keep getting 'odd number of parameters' error. Thanks for the wisdom.

my %colors = (
    but_quit => {
        '-background' => 'red',
        '-foreground' => 'black',
    },
    lbl =>  {
        '-background' => 'tan',
        '-foreground' => 'black',
    },
    ent =>  {
        '-background' => 'white',
        '-foreground' => 'black',
    },
);

$frame->LabEntry(-label=>"IP Address", -labelWidth=>$lblwidth, -labelP
+ack=>[-side=>'left', -anchor=>'w'], -textvariable => \$ServiceSystem,
+ $colors{lbl} )
[download]

PS: i have also tried:

lbl =>  {
        '-background => tan, -foreground => black',
    },
[download]

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Re: tk widget options stored in hash by kcott (Archbishop) on Nov 13, 2013 at 19:27 UTC
G'day glenn, Predefining default options is a good idea. Your problem here is that your using a hashref instead of a hash: you want `%{$colors{lbl}}`, not `$colors{lbl}`. Also, if you put your defaults first, you can override them if you want to. E.g. `$frame->LabEntry( %{$colors{lbl}}, -other_opt => 'other_value', -background => 'non_default_colour' );` [download] By the way, your "PS: i have also tried: ..." is wrong for all sorts of reasons. Use strict and warnings in all your scripts to pick up errors like this: `$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e ' my %colours = ( lbl => { "-background => tan, -foreground => black +", } ); ' Odd number of elements in anonymous hash at -e line 2.` [download] -- Ken	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: tk widget options stored in hash by glenn (Scribe) on Nov 13, 2013 at 20:01 UTC
Thank you, i knew i was just missing something... of course wrap the d@#n thing as a hash.... worked perfectly. I appreciate the additional tip on declaring it first so that it could be overridden.	[reply]
Re^2: tk widget options stored in hash by glenn (Scribe) on Nov 13, 2013 at 21:20 UTC
Is there a way to get info about the tk widget your currently in? I have not found anything as such, but this would be very helpful. `$frame->LabEntry(%{$colors{$_->class()}},....);` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: tk widget options stored in hash by kcott (Archbishop) on Nov 13, 2013 at 22:24 UTC
If you're just interested in options, then `cget()` and `configure()` are probably the methods you want: see Tk::options. A lot of other methods providing information about widgets are documented in Tk::Widget. There's also information that's specific to particular widgets, geometry managers and so on. Spend some time getting to know where this is documented from the links provided in the Tk Distribution Documentation. See also equivalent documentation for User Contributed Widgets. -- Ken	[reply] [d/l] [select]