access properties of parent widget in Tkinter

[William Gill]

Kent Johnson wrote:
> William Gill wrote:
> 
>> I am trying to get & set the properties of a widget's parent widget. 
>> What I have works, but seems like a long way around the block.  First 
>> I get the widget name using w.winfo_parent(), then i convert the name 
>> to a reference using nametowidget().
>>
>>   self.nametowidget(event.widget.winfo_parent()).hasChanged= True
> 
> 
> Personally I think it is bad design for a widget to assume anything 
> about its enclosing environment. What about passing a StringVar or 
> IntVar to the child widget and letting it work with that?
> 
> Kent

Maybe I should clarify what I am doing and why, so that I can get a 
better understanding of your replies.
The overall app is a gui editor for a database made up of several 
related tables; one for basic info, one for their various phone numbers 
(publish, contact, fax,cell, etc), one for various addresses (publish 
,ship to, mail to, etc.), one for the services they subscribe to, etc. 
The editor brings records from each of the various tables together in 
one “record” for editing. Each table has an associated python/tkinter 
class (widget) that displays the fields in a parent widget, and each 
field is a child of the table widget.  So “city” is a child of address, 
is a child of client. If I change or add a phone number that db table 
will need updating when I’m done, but the address table may not.  I have 
designed each table class with a hasChanged attribute, initialized to 
False, if a child Entry widget changes I set has changed to True.  When 
I’m done the exit routine runs each table objects save routine, which 
checks hasChanged to see if an update query needs to be run on that table.

Client
    - basicData object (data from client table)
        - company
        - contact person
        - notes
        - phones object (data from phonenumber table)
            - type (cell, fax, publish, etc)
            - areaCode
            - exchange
            - base

If I change the area code in one record only the phonenumber table needs 
to be updated, but since areaCode is a child of phones, 
phones.hasChanged needs to be set to True by the areaCode entry widget.

 > Personally I think it is bad design for a widget to assume anything
 > about its enclosing environment. What about passing a StringVar or
 > IntVar to the child widget and letting it work with that?

This is not a criticism, but how is passing a known intVar or stringVar 
any different than designing with the knowledge that an areaCode widget 
can not exist except as a child of phonenumber?   Besides, I need to 
pass the state of areaCode (has it changed or not), not its value?


Bill