Re: Custom TreeModel

[Emmanuel Rodriguez <emmanuel rodriguez gmail com>]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Torsten Schoenfeld <kaffeetisch gmx de> wrote:

On 09.01.2010 16:08, Emmanuel Rodriguez wrote:

What I've noticed is that the data stored in the Gtk2::TreeIter is
really volatile and that it doesn't survive too long after a method
returns. Furthermore, only the 2 first elements of the TreeIter make it
back to the TreeModel methods intact. I also noticed that setting
references into the last 2 fields can yield strange situations.

As Kevin said, tree iters don't keep stuff you put into them alive for you. ÂIf you want to put any non-integer thing into an iter, you need to keep it alive some other way, for example by also storing it in a cache inside the tree model. ÂThis is also shortly explained in perldoc Gtk2::TreeModel / CREATING A CUSTOM TREE MODEL.

I see that there's not way to avoid the cache. It's a bit of a pity that I can't detect when an iter is no longer needed as eventually all nodes will be duplicated into the cache.

I'm guessing that with a normal (pure Perl) tree model this will not be the case as nodes will be already in the model. Using XML::LibXML nodes is a bit peculiar as the memory management is a bit different. If I'm not mistaken XML::LibXML assumes that nodes are attached to the underlying C model and that the SVs wrapping them can be easily discarded at anytime as long as the original C structure lives.

I could rewrite this tree model with a pure Perl tree model (HTML::Tree) and add it to the Gtk2-Perl examples.

Here's a patch against your program that implements this. ÂIt also fixes an unrelated typo.

Thanks.
Â

Is the Perl sample code wrong? Maybe I missed something..
Would it make sense to add it to the Gtk2-Perl examples, perhaps someone
could find it useful.

The customlist.pl example does this in GET_ITER:

   Âmy $record = $self->{rows}[$n];
   Â...
   Âreturn [ $self->{stamp}, $n, $record, undef ];

So the reference it puts into the iter is kept alive by $self->{rows}.

I guess a better explanation in the example and maybe also in the Gtk2::TreeModel docs would be useful. ÂCare to write something up?

I will do it.

-- 
Emmanuel Rodriguez