How do you force refresh of a wx.Panel?

Question

I am trying to modify the controls of a Panel, have it update, then continue on with code execution. The problem seems to be that the Panel is waiting for Idle before it will refresh itself. I've tried refresh of course as well as GetSizer().Layout() and even sent a resize event to the frame using the SendSizeEvent() method, but to no avail. I'm at a loss here, I find it difficult to believe there is no way to force a redrawing of this panel. Here is the code that changes the controls:

def HideButtons(self):
        self.newButton.Show(False)
        self.openButton.Show(False)
        self.exitButton.Show(False)
        self.buttonSizer.Detach(self.newButton)
        self.buttonSizer.Detach(self.openButton)
        self.buttonSizer.Detach(self.exitButton)
        loadingLabel = wx.StaticText(self.splashImage, wx.ID_ANY, "Loading...", style=wx.ALIGN_LEFT)
        loadingLabel.SetBackgroundColour(wx.WHITE)
        self.buttonSizer.Add(loadingLabel)
        self.GetSizer().Layout()
        self.splashImage.Refresh()

Has anybody else encountered anything like this? And how did you resolve it if so?

Answer 1

You need to call the Update method.

Answer 2

I had a StaticBitmap that, similarly, wouldn't update by any of these techniques (including the Update suggested in the accepted answer).

I found that calling .Hide() and .Show() on the Panel was enough to refresh the image. I suspect that the same would be true if I had run the functions against a lower-level object like the StaticBitmap.

Answer 3

You could put the mutable part of your panel on subpanels, e.g. like this:

def MakeButtonPanels(self):
    self.buttonPanel1 = wx.Panel(self)
    self.Add(self.buttonPanel1, 0, wxALL|wxALIGN_LEFT, 5)
    # ... make the three buttons and the button sizer on buttonPanel1

    self.buttonPanel2 = wx.Panel(self)
    self.Add(self.buttonPanel2, 0, wxALL|wxALIGN_LEFT, 5)
    # ... make the loading label and its sizer on buttonPanel2

    self.buttonPanel2.Show(False) # hide it by default

def HideButtons(self):
    self.buttonPanel1.Show(False)
    self.buttonPanel2.Show(True)
    self.Layout()