Writing a first plugin

[Agama]

I hadn't even got as far as considering that calibre functions might not be available - I had fallen at the first hurdle! I didn't know how to use .py files outside of calibre. I had a look at IDLE, which Python had installed, but it seemed to be just a command prompt rather than a place for running .py files.

[Agama]

I've got my plugin well on the way to working as required, so I would now like to remove the QDialog in main.py which is called from ui.py, (as per the interface demo plugin), and just let the plugin run when its tool button is clicked on the main toolbar. I've got the icon on the toolbar but I don't know what to replace the QDialog with. I still need main.py as it contains all my code; I just don't need the dialog.

[kiwidude]

What is the name of your function in main.py that does the work?

At the moment presumably you are still hooking to a show_dialog function of the qaction triggered event with this line:
self.qaction.triggered.connect(self.show_dialog)

So other than renaming your show_dialog function to something more meaningful (e.g. do_stuff), you should just change your do_stuff function to now call whatever your function name is in main.py that you have imported.

It is kind of hard to be more specific without seeing your code - you can always pm me a link or post it here if you want us to take a look.

[Agama]

Some code snippets should make things clearer.
(Colon's show where some lines of code have been skipped.)

ui.py has

from calibre_plugins.ag_normepub.main import PlugMain
:
    self.qaction.triggered.connect(self.show_dialog)
:
    def show_dialog(self):
:
        ufig = self.interface_action_base_plugin.do_user_config
        plug = PlugMain(self.gui, self.qaction.icon(), ufig)
        plug.show()

main.py has:

class PlugMain(QDialog):

    def __init__(self, gui, icon, ufig):

        self.gui = gui
        self.ufig = ufig
        QDialog.__init__(self, gui)
:
        self.btn_norm = QPushButton('Normalise ePub', self)
        self.btn_norm.clicked.connect(self.normalise)
        self.lay.addWidget(self.btn_norm)
:
    def normalise(self):
:

and normalise does all the work. So I want get rid of this QDialog but I can't delete the whole class as normalise() is defined within it.

[kiwidude]

Well you've got a few choices. You don't "have" to have a class, you can just declare normalise at the module level (reduce the indentation) and then change your show_dialog so it just says:

    def show_dialog(self):
        from calibre_plugins.ag_normepub.main import normalise
        normalise()

def normalise():

Or if you still want to have a class, change PlugMain so it doesn't inherit from QDialog:

    def show_dialog(self):
        plug = PlugMain()
        plug.normalise()

class PlugMain(object):
    def normalise(self):

I'm assuming in the above you don't need any of the gui related parameters, if you do just have a briefer constructor.

[Agama]

The first option looks ideal. I didn't realise that I could have a def outside of a class.