UI files doesn't show its widgets to gtk_builder_get_objects

Question

I have this UI file edited with Glade 3.18.3. I open the UI in the (C) gtk program (no problem here, no error messages).

Then I tried to get the widget references out of the builder object using gtk_builder_get_object, but could not find any.

I read that gtkbuilder used to set the name attribute of the widgets to the id, but doesn't do that anymore. So I defined the name in a couple of widgets, but that didn't help.

In desesperation, I added a simple loop which calls gtk_builder_get_objects, but this function returns NULL:

  GSList *lp, *lst = gtk_builder_get_objects(builder);

  printf("%p\n", lst);
  for (lp = lst; lp != NULL; lp = lp->next) {
    printf("%s\n", (char *)(lp->data));
  }

Anyone?

Answer 1

The problem was that the name property of the window containing the widgets must also be set in the UI, else the gtk_builder_add_objects_from_file won't work either.

This is going to be a major headache. The UI is quite complicated (a couple of hundreds of widgets). So that means I have to visit them all in Glade to edit their name... or maybe write a script. And this worked so well before.

Answer 2

Your example is misleading: you probably have some other problem that your code is not showing.

The following test case uses your very same loop and does not return NULL. The ui file does not have any name set on the objects. Try it.

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

int main()
{
    GtkBuilder *builder;
    GSList *lp, *lst;

    gtk_init(NULL, NULL);

    builder = gtk_builder_new_from_file("test.ui");
    lst = gtk_builder_get_objects(builder);

    g_print("%p\n", lst);
    for (lp = lst; lp != NULL; lp = lp->next) {
        g_print("%p\n", (char *)(lp->data));
    }

    return 0;
}

And this is test.ui:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<interface>
  <requires lib="gtk+" version="2.24"/>
  <!-- interface-naming-policy project-wide -->
  <object class="GtkWindow" id="window1">
    <property name="can_focus">False</property>
    <child>
      <object class="GtkVBox" id="vbox1">
        <property name="visible">True</property>
        <property name="can_focus">False</property>
        <child>
          <object class="GtkLabel" id="label1">
            <property name="visible">True</property>
            <property name="can_focus">False</property>
            <property name="label" translatable="yes">label</property>
          </object>
          <packing>
            <property name="expand">True</property>
            <property name="fill">True</property>
            <property name="position">0</property>
          </packing>
        </child>
        <child>
          <object class="GtkButton" id="button1">
            <property name="label" translatable="yes">button</property>
            <property name="visible">True</property>
            <property name="can_focus">True</property>
            <property name="receives_default">True</property>
          </object>
          <packing>
            <property name="expand">True</property>
            <property name="fill">True</property>
            <property name="position">1</property>
          </packing>
        </child>
      </object>
    </child>
  </object>
</interface>