How to enable EditView and give it focus and user input without mouse click

[rcook]

I have a simple Cursive-based app that contains an edit view that is initially disabled. The app can be quit by pressing "q" while pressing "e" is intended to enable the edit view and give it focus so that the user can start typing in the edit view directly. Instead, on pressing "e", the edit view is enabled but the user cannot yet type directly in it. Instead, the user needs to click on the edit view before they can type in it. I would expect "take_focus" do this without requiring a mouse click. What additional calls do I need to make so that the user's keypresses go directly to the edit view.

This program demonstrates this behaviour:

use cursive::direction::{Direction, Orientation};
use cursive::view::{Nameable, Resizable};
use cursive::views::{EditView, LinearLayout, TextView};
use cursive::{Cursive, View};

fn main() {
    let mut c = cursive::default();

    c.add_fullscreen_layer(
        LinearLayout::new(Orientation::Vertical)
            .child(
                TextView::new("Q to quit\nE to edit")
                    .min_height(5)
                    .full_width(),
            )
            .child(EditView::new().disabled().with_name("EDIT")),
    );

    c.add_global_callback('q', Cursive::quit);
    c.add_global_callback('e', |c| {
        c.call_on_name("EDIT", |edit_view: &mut EditView| {
            edit_view.enable();
            edit_view.take_focus(Direction::none()).unwrap();
        });
    });

    c.run();
}

See also main.rs.

[gyscos]

Hi, and thanks for the question!

The main issue here is the concept of focus: the EditView itself cannot control if it's in focus. Instead, its parents (in this case, the LinearLayout) decide which view is active.

You will need to give a name to that LinearLayout, and use something like focus_view() with a name selector, or set_focus_index if you know it'll be the child at index 1.

Note that you can call call_on_name on any view (with the Finder trait), so in the callback, you can call it on the linear layout to get the editview (since c will be borrowed):

        use cursive::traits::Finder;

        c.call_on_name("LINEAR", |linear: &mut LinearLayout| {
            linear.call_on_name("EDIT", EditView::enable).unwrap();
            linear.focus_view(Selector::Name("EDIT")).unwrap();
        }).unwrap();

As a bonus section (but probably unnecessary here), some views could have callback actions for when the focus changes. This is why both set_focus_index and focus_view return an EventResult. The "proper" way would be to forward this EventResult until you have access to the &mut Cursive, and then call process(c):

        c.call_on_name("LINEAR", |linear: &mut LinearLayout| {
            linear.call_on_name("EDIT", EditView::enable).unwrap();
            linear.focus_view(Selector::Name("EDIT")).unwrap() // Return the value here
        }).unwrap().process(c)

But in this case, you might know that nothing there will trigger any callback on a focus change, and not bother forwarding it.

[rcook]

Thanks @gyscos , this is very helpful!