Alternative Layout constructor

[acbuie]

Firstly, many thanks for this project! It is excellent and I find myself using it everywhere.

I am making a weather application that leans heavily on Layout. I would love to be able to have end users customize the arrangement of each section. For example, being able to move the current_forecast elsewhere in the layout, ect.

I do not intend for this to be a live display, but rather a nicely formatted dashboard of weather information.

╭──────────────────────────────────────── 'header' (102 x 3) ────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                   Layout(name='header', size=3)                                    │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ 'current_forecast' (34 x 15) ─╮╭────────────────── 'hourly_forecast' (68 x 10) ───────────────────╮
│                                ││                                                                  │
│                                ││                                                                  │
│                                ││                                                                  │
│                                ││             Layout(name='hourly_forecast', ratio=2)              │
│  Layout(                       ││                                                                  │
│      name='current_forecast',  ││                                                                  │
│      ratio=2                   ││                                                                  │
│  )                             ││                                                                  │
│                                │╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
│                                │╭─ Next Hour Precipitation ────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                ││ test                                                             │
│                                ││                                                                  │
│                                ││                                                                  │
╰────────────────────────────────╯╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─────────────────────────────────── 'daily_forecast' (102 x 11) ────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
│                               Layout(name='daily_forecast', ratio=2)                               │
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
│                                                                                                    │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

At the moment, the best I could do is hardcode a Layout that I think they'd like best, and then allow them to edit the visibility/ratio/size/ect via a configuration file by passing the values into the Layout constructor.

I'm not sure what the best solution for this is. I could allow them to write their own layout code in a file, and then read it in as a string and assign it with exec(), though that feels a little off to me.

I think it would be amazing to support some form of alternative constructor for Layout, either via string or rich.Tree, or something I've not thought about! Let me know you all have any ideas for a solution to this.

[willmcgugan]

You could build some kind of declarative layer. i.e. your app reads a config file and builds the Layout. I think that would be a nice feature, but I'm not sure it belongs in the code library.

[acbuie]

Thanks for your thoughts! That does make sense, it isn't a very common use case.

Perhaps if I can make a clean configuration -> Layout pipeline I will link it back into this discussion, in case anybody else is interested in what that could look like.