Fastest way to populate wx.Choice?

Question

Need to populate a wx.Choice with hundreds of choices, and it looks like there's only one method for this, which is Append():

choiceBox = wx.Choice(choices=[], id = wx.ID_ANY, parent=self, pos=wx.Point(0, 289),
                                          size=wx.Size(190, 21), style=0)

for item in aList:
    choiceBox.Append(item)

I've tried to append a whole list all at once but it won't work, so is there any better way to do this?

Answer 1

what ??? you just give it to choices

choiceBox = wx.Choice(choices=aList, id = wx.ID_ANY, parent=self, pos=wx.Point(0, 289),
                                      size=wx.Size(190, 21), style=0)

you can also do it later with

choicebox.SetItems(aList)

here is a simple example where generating the choices takes a long time , but we use threading to not block the ui

import wx
import threading 
import time
import random
def make_choices():
    choices = []
    for _ in range(80):
        choices.append(str(random.randint(0,1000000)))
        time.sleep(0.1)
        print "Making choice List!"
    return choices

def make_choice_thread(wxChoice,choice_fn):
    wx.CallAfter(wxChoice.SetItems,choice_fn())
    wx.CallAfter(wxChoice.SetSelection,0)

a = wx.App(redirect=False)
fr = wx.Frame(None,-1,"A Big Choice...")
st = wx.StaticText(fr,-1,"For Some reason you must pick from a large list")
ch = wx.Choice(fr,-1,choices=["Loading...please wait!"],size=(200,-1),pos=(15,15))
ch.SetSelection(0)
t = threading.Thread(target=make_choice_thread,args=(ch,make_choices))
t.start()
fr.Show()
a.MainLoop()