Can I load a gtkbuilder app into a "parent" gtkbuilder frame?

Question

I am using Glade-3 to build a suite of Gtk applications.

The applications are supposed to have a common look-and-feel, and we have decided on a common "frame" that all apps will share, that includes a menu bar, toolbar, status-bar(s), a vertical panel - and a space in the middle that will be filled out by each application.

This common "frame" is designed using Glade-3 and saved in Gtkbuilder format.

What I would like to do is design the "middle part" for each application using Glade-3 as-well, then somehow load it into the parent frame.

Is such a thing possible? I don't mind rewriting the parent frame in Gtk as it is fairly simple - the main meat will be in the application specific details that we definitely want to design using Glade.

I have seen no way to somehow get the result of reading a Gtkbuilder file, and sticking it into a parent widget.

I am using Perl/Gtk2.

Answer 1

You can do all of that using GtkBuilder. For example, given these UI files:

<!-- parent.ui -->
<interface>
    <object class='GtkWindow' id='window'/>  <!-- See #1 -->
</interface>

<!-- child1.ui -->
<interface>
    <object class='GtkLabel' id='content'>  <!-- See #2 -->
        <property name='label'>Hello World</property>
    </object>
</interface>

<!-- child2.ui -->
<interface>
    <object class='GtkLabel' id='content'>  <!-- See #2 -->
        <property name='label'>Hi there</property>
    </object>
</interface>

you can build two windows using the following code (in Python, sorry; I'm not familiar with the Perl bindings).

def build(child_filename):
    builder = gtk.Builder()
    builder.add_from_file('parent.ui')
    builder.add_from_file(child_filename)
    window = builder.get_object('window')  #1
    content = builder.get_object('content')  #2
    window.add(content)
    window.show_all()
    return window

window1 = build('child1.ui')
window2 = build('child2.ui')

You can also build multiple copies of the same window if you want.