Editing values of a table selection

[andrequinonezgtz]

Describe the bug

At the end of 2025, I set out an ambitious goal for 2026: Create a fully functional inventory app by the end of the year. I use ambitious as an adjective to describe the project, because for a person with no programming experience this is far beyond my scope of knowledge. But I fully committed to the task with no actual idea of what the work actual implied, drastically underestimating the amount of work that goes into building a rudimentary program. So here I am, after “x” amount of untracked hours of coding, frustration, confusion and wanting to give up, with a simple app which allows me to log in and will display the following pages:

1. Inventory List [currently working on]
2. Settings [empty]
3. Add [will delete later]
4. People [empty]
5. Statistics [empty]
6. History [empty]
7. log out.

Due to a lack of where to start, after a very superficial research I decided to use Beeware / Toga to build this app (due to a lack of knowledge, and because I avoided overthinking so I just chose whatever).

To the inventory table I was able to successfully, create a Toga table with ”Add” and “Delete” buttons work just fine. However, I can’t seem to figure out how to create a functional “Edit” button.

I’ve tried tinkering with it here and there, but the issue doens’t seem to be structural or syntax, rather that row objects are:

• not iterable
• not subscriptable
• Toga has no .data
• Toga has no .row

So I must stop trying to read data from the Row object.

Any tips? Possible solutions? are people who have encountered similar issues?

Steps to reproduce

#A function that will select the intended item to edit and display a widget which will allow me to type the information I want it to be replaced with
def open_edit_product(self, widget):
    edit_selected = self.inventory_table.selection
    if edit_selected is None:
        print("Select a product")
        return

    row_data = list(edit_selected)
    self.edit_index = self.inventory_objects.index(row_data)

    self.type_edit = toga.TextInput(value=row_data[0])
    self.name_edit = toga.TextInput(value=row_data[1])
    self.qnty_edit = toga.TextInput(value=row_data[2])

    edit_save = toga.Button("Save", on_press=self.edit_product, style=Pack(padding=5))

    box = toga.Box(
        children=[
            toga.Label("Edit product", style=Pack(padding=10)),
            self.type_edit,
            self.name_edit,
            self.qnty_edit,
            edit_save
        ],
        style=Pack(direction=COLUMN, padding=20)
    )

    self.main_window.content = box

#function that executes the edition
def edit_product(self, widget):
        edited_item = [
            self.type_edit.value,
            self.name_edit.value,
            self.qnty_edit.value,
            self.serial_edit.value        
        ]
        self.inventory_objects[self.edit_index] = edited_item
        self.open_inventory_list(None)`

Expected behavior

It should edit the row data.

Screenshots

No response

Environment

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
• Python version: Python 3.13
• Software versions:
  • Briefcase:
  • Toga: n/a
  • ...

Logs

Additional context

No response

[corranwebster]

Firstly, congratulations on getting this far without a programming background!

I’ve tried tinkering with it here and there, but the issue doens’t seem to be structural or syntax, rather that row objects are:

• not iterable
• not subscriptable
• Toga has no .data
• Toga has no .row

So I must stop trying to read data from the Row object.

I am guessing that the thing you are missing is that Row objects have the data stored in attributes. Depending on how you have your table set up, they are likely to come from the heading names or the accessors argument you passed to your table (you didn't include that in your snippet so I don't know exactly what the attributes will be), so you should be looking for things like edit_selected.type and edit_selected.name.

This section of code in the Table example shows getting data from a row:

toga/examples/table/table/app.py

Line 46 in dacd077

msg = f"You selected the {adjective} {genre} movie {row.title[1]} ({row.year})"

using row.year to get the year, and row.title[1] to get the title out of a column which has an icon and text.

This might be better as a post in the discussions section, rather than a bug.

[HalfWhitt]

...Man, I was in the middle of typing up a response when Corran beat me to it.

I'll just add:

I’ve tried tinkering with it here and there, but the issue doesn’t seem to be structural or syntax, rather that row objects are:

• not iterable

• not subscriptable

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure there's a good reason we couldn't support these. I'm not sure how useful making them iterable would be, but being able to access values as indices, e.g. row["name"], could certainly come in handy. Any thoughts, @corranwebster ?

• Toga has no .data

• Toga has no .row

A table's data attribute is a ListSource; it and Row are both importable from toga.sources. However, the intention is that most of the time you shouldn't need to manually create them yourself.

[corranwebster]

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure there's a good reason we couldn't support these. I'm not sure how useful making them iterable would be, but being able to access values as indices, e.g. row["name"], could certainly come in handy. Any thoughts, @corranwebster ?

It conflicts with the Node API for Tree widgets which are rows, but with children accessed as indices.

You could have an alternative API design where rows are mappings and the children are accessed via an attribute (eg. row["name"] and node.children[2]) and it may even have som advantages, but it would be a major change to do that.