===
MDI
===

**Manual Data Input**

Start by adding a tab to the left tab widget. Right click on the `File` tab and
select `Insert Page` then `After Current Page` and name that tab MDI. Drag a
grid into the tab and change the tab layout to grid and morph the grid into a
QFrame as before.

.. image:: images/vcp1-designer-23.png
   :align: center
   :scale: 40 %

Add a `MDIEntry` to the frame and and change the `objectName` to ``mdiEntry``
and change the font to 12 from the `Property Editor`. Now add some
`Push Buttons` below that. Add 6 rows of buttons with 5 buttons in each row.
Press the `Ctrl` key and click on each button to select them all. Right click on
any button and select `Assign to button group` and click on `New Button Group`.

.. image:: images/vcp1-designer-24.png
   :align: center
   :scale: 40 %

In the `Object Inspector` scroll down to the bottom and find the `buttonGroup`
object we just created and change the `objectName` to ``mdiButtonGroup``. Now we
have a group of buttons that all belong to the same group. Now lets change the
text of the buttons like the following and change the `objectName` for the Enter
button to ``mdiEnterButton`` and the `objectName` for the Clear button to
``mdiClearButton``. Right click on the Clear and Enter buttons and select
`Assign to button group` `None` to remove them from the group.

.. image:: images/vcp1-designer-25.png
   :align: center
   :scale: 40 %

Now lets work some magic, open up `~/vcp1/vcp1/mainwindow.py` and add the
following Python code after `# add any custom methods here` and pay attention to
the indentation level. The example uses 4 spaces per level. Don't forget to add
the line after `super(MyMainWindow, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)`
::

    from qtpyvcp.widgets.form_widgets.main_window import VCPMainWindow

    # Setup logging
    from qtpyvcp.utilities import logger
    LOG = logger.getLogger('qtpyvcp.' + __name__)

    class MyMainWindow(VCPMainWindow):
        """Main window class for the VCP."""
        def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
            super(MyMainWindow, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
            self.mdiButtonGroup.buttonClicked.connect(self.mdiHandleKeys)

        # add any custom methods here

        def mdiHandleKeys(self, button):
            char = str(button.text())
            text = self.mdiEntry.text() or '0'
            if text != '0':
                text += char
            else:
                text = char
            self.mdiEntry.setText(text)

What we are doing in the Python code is connecting all the buttons in the
`mdiButtonGroup` to the function `mdiHandleKeys`. When a button is clicked it is
passed to the function as `button`. So we take the button.text() and make sure
it's a string then assign it to the char variable. Next if the mdiEntry has any
text in it we assign that to the text variable, if not then we assign it the
character 0. Next we either append char to text or assign char to text. Last we
set the new text to the mdiEntry.

The reason the Enter and Clear buttons are not part of the group is we will
connect those two buttons clicked signal to the mdiEntry. These are the signals
for the clear and enter buttons.
::

    sender             action       receiver     slot
    mdiEnterButton    clicked()     mdiEnter     submit()
    mdiClearButton    clicked()     mdiEnter     clear()

Now when we run the VCP we can enter and execute MDI commands from the touch
screen

.. image:: images/vcp1-run-11.png
   :align: center
   :scale: 60 %