Basics of Custom Component with editable layout at runtime

General JUCE discussion
1

Hi,

I´m new to JUCE so I expect this question won't be too basic to be asked here, as I can find any examples of this or specific information I think I´m  missing  a basic concept of how the code should work here.

I'm working in my first app with JUCE. It's a one year development project and I want to settle good basics. I want to create a custom component (let's say a grid of TextButtons) which changes layout dynamically when the user adds or removes buttons from it. I don't have problems starting the application with different initial setups but I can't make it work to let the user modify it at runtime.

How I´m thinking:

1 - Start the app and create a initial grid adding and making visible buttons
2 - When the user changes the layout remove all children from the grid component that holds the buttons.
3 - Create again the buttons with the new ones and add and make them visible.
3 - Repaint?

But nothing changes on the GUI. Also there's the tabs component in JUCE that does this so I think it can be possible as it has addTab and RemoveTab and works adding and removing children.

Also I read about valueTrees and that their changes can be linked to a Component. But I don't know if as I read in other parts of the forum that this is a better way only if you have a really complicated layout to handle.

Thanks in advance. I'm loving JUCE and I´m learning a lot of C++ working with it.

2

You are probably over thinking this. Removing every single component from the original parent and recreating them all again from scratch seems like overkill. Why not just call Component::removeChildComponents() to remove the ones you don't want any more?  

3

Hi Rory,

Thanks fro taking a look at this. You´re probably right :) I´m looking at too many new things at the same time. I´ll follow that path.