How to reset properties using names, not indexes?

[bryanwhiting]

H2O wave noob here (only 5 hours in so far, but loving it!)

Per https://wave.h2o.ai/docs/examples/form-visibility, the code to set the visibility status is complicated, requiring you to know the index location of the element:

items = q.page['example'].items
    items_to_hide = [
        items[0].text_xl,
        items[2].text_m,
        items[4].inline.items[0].button,
        items[5].buttons.items[2].button,
    ]
    if q.args.hide:
        for i in items_to_hide:
            i.visible = False
    if q.args.show:
        for i in items_to_hide:
            i.visible = True

for example, if I set the "name" property from

ui.text_xl(content='First text'),

to

ui.text_xl(content='First text', name='first_text),

I'd love to be able to just do:

 items.first_text.text_xl.visible=False
#or
 items['first_text'].text_xl.visible=False

I know items is a list. but why isn't it designed as a dictionary? I feel like this would make the names much more useful and the code much more readable.

[bryanwhiting]

Something like this would be great:

...
ui.text_xl(name='text1', content='First text'),
 ui.text_l(name='text2', content='Second text'),
...
items_to_hide = [i for i in items if i.name in ('text1','text2')]

but admittedly this might reflect my deep lack of understanding of how wave stores metadata. would love to better understand!

[mturoci]

The python UI objects in Wave are write-only. Notice that you get an Expando instance when trying to print the existing cards.

See my other comment for how we plan to address this.

[mturoci]

Hello @bryanwhiting, you are right, the current API is cumbersome. Will be resolved by #148 hopefully in the near future :) Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

[bryanwhiting]

thanks for building an awesome app! in just 5 hours (from bare bones not having coded in h2o-wave at all) i was able to build a simple app that could visualize 3 target variables across 600 datasets with helpful dropdowns. can't wait to see what happens now that I know what's going on!

[mturoci]

That's awesome! Keep up the great work :)