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?

I'm working on a small game and have run into the following problem. I have a main program window that hosts the main application (strategic portion). Occasionally, I need to transfer control to a second window for resolution of part of the game (tactical portion). While in the second window, I want the processing in the first window to stop and wait for completion of the work being done in the second window.

Normally a modal dialog would do the trick but I want the new window to have some functionality that I can't seem to get with a wxDialog, namely a status bar at the bottom and the ability to resize/maximize/minimize the window (this should be possible but doesn't work, see this question How to get the minimize and maximize buttons to appear on a wxDialog object).

As an addition note, I want the second window's functionality needs to stay completely decoupled from the primary window as it will be spun off into a separate program eventually.

Has anyone done this or have any suggestions?

Answer 1

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()