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1/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
2// Name: treectrl
3// Purpose: topic overview
4// Author: wxWidgets team
5// RCS-ID: $Id$
6// Licence: wxWindows license
7/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
8
9/*!
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15b6757b 11 @page treectrl_overview wxTreeCtrl overview
36c9828f 12
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13 Classes: #wxTreeCtrl, #wxImageList
14 The tree control displays its items in a tree like structure. Each item has its
15 own (optional) icon and a label. An item may be either collapsed (meaning that
16 its children are not visible) or expanded (meaning that its children are
17 shown). Each item in the tree is identified by its @e itemId which is of
18 opaque data type @e wxTreeItemId. You can test whether an item is valid
19 by calling wxTreeItemId::IsOk.
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20 The items text and image may be retrieved and changed with
21 #GetItemText/#SetItemText
22 and
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23 #GetItemImage/#SetItemImage.
24 In fact, an item may even have two images associated with it: the normal one
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25 and another one for selected state which is set/retrieved with
26 #SetItemSelectedImage/#GetItemSelectedImage
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27 functions, but this functionality might be unavailable on some platforms.
28 Tree items have several attributes: an item may be selected or not, visible or
29 not, bold or not. It may also be expanded or collapsed. All these attributes
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30 may be retrieved with the corresponding functions:
31 #IsSelected,
32 #IsVisible, #IsBold
15b6757b 33 and #IsExpanded. Only one item at a time may be
36c9828f 34 selected, selecting another one (with
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35 #SelectItem) automatically unselects the
36 previously selected one.
37 In addition to its icon and label, a user-specific data structure may be associated
38 with all tree items. If you wish to do it, you should derive a class from @e wxTreeItemData which is a very simple class having only one function @e GetId() which returns the id of the item this data is associated with. This
39 data will be freed by the control itself when the associated item is deleted
40 (all items are deleted when the control is destroyed), so you shouldn't delete
36c9828f 41 it yourself (if you do it, you should call
15b6757b 42 #SetItemData(@NULL) to prevent the tree from
36c9828f 43 deleting the pointer second time). The associated data may be retrieved with
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44 #GetItemData() function.
45 Working with trees is relatively straightforward if all the items are added to
46 the tree at the moment of its creation. However, for large trees it may be
47 very inefficient. To improve the performance you may want to delay adding the
48 items to the tree until the branch containing the items is expanded: so, in the
36c9828f 49 beginning, only the root item is created (with
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50 #AddRoot). Other items are added when
51 EVT_TREE_ITEM_EXPANDING event is received: then all items lying immediately
52 under the item being expanded should be added, but, of course, only when this
53 event is received for the first time for this item - otherwise, the items would
54 be added twice if the user expands/collapses/re-expands the branch.
55 The tree control provides functions for enumerating its items. There are 3
56 groups of enumeration functions: for the children of a given item, for the
57 sibling of the given item and for the visible items (those which are currently
58 shown to the user: an item may be invisible either because its branch is
59 collapsed or because it is scrolled out of view). Child enumeration functions
60 require the caller to give them a @e cookie parameter: it is a number which
61 is opaque to the caller but is used by the tree control itself to allow
62 multiple enumerations to run simultaneously (this is explicitly allowed). The
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63 only thing to remember is that the @e cookie passed to
64 #GetFirstChild and to
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65 #GetNextChild should be the same variable (and
66 that nothing should be done with it by the user code).
36c9828f 67 Among other features of the tree control are: item sorting with
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68 #SortChildren which uses the user-defined comparison
69 function #OnCompareItems (by default the
70 comparison is the alphabetic comparison of tree labels), hit testing
71 (determining to which portion of the control the given point belongs, useful
36c9828f 72 for implementing drag-and-drop in the tree) with
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73 #HitTest and editing of the tree item labels in
74 place (see #EditLabel).
75 Finally, the tree control has a keyboard interface: the cursor navigation (arrow) keys
76 may be used to change the current selection. HOME and END are used to go to
77 the first/last sibling of the current item. '+', '-' and '*' expand, collapse
78 and toggle the current branch. Note, however, that DEL and INS keys do
79 nothing by default, but it is common to associate them with deleting an item from
80 a tree and inserting a new one into it.
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15b6757b 82 */
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