Connecting Events

Connecting events works similarly to the signal-slot connection mechanism of Qt framework. There are two types of events: Control events (when an on-screen Control, e.g. a button, is actvated) and a keyboard action (when a key bound to an action is pressed). You can connect an event to a function or a method that will be run when the respective event is triggered. The connection mechanism is implemented through connect method of a base PyXBMCt class. This methods takes 2 parameters: an object to be connected (a Control instance or a numeric action code, and a function/method object to be called. For example:

self.connect(self.foo_button, self.on_foo_clicked)

Here self.foo_button is a Button instance and self.on_foo_clicked is some method that needs to be called when a user activates self.foo_button.

Warning

For connection you must provide a function object without brackets (), not a function call. Do not confuse those two!

Similarly to PyQt signal-slot connection, lambda can be used to connect a function/method with arguments known at runtime. For example:

self.connect(self.foo_button, lambda: self.on_foo_clicked('bar', 'spam'))

You can only connect the following controls: Button, RadioButton and List. Other controls do not generate any events, so connecting them won’t have any effect.

The key code ACTION_PREVIOUS_MENU or 10 (bound to ESC key by default) is already connected to the method that closes a current addon window (close), so you cannot connect it to any function/method. Or technically you can, but such connection won’t work. It guarantees that you always have a way to close an active addon window.