Best Practice

Here's some tips that will be useful for better GUI design.

Shared Input Parameters

If you want to control input parameters outside each magicgui widget, the example below is the most naive implementation.

from magicclass import magicclass, magicmenu, field, abstractapi, set_design

@magicclass
class Main:
    @magicmenu
    class Menu:
        add = abstractapi()
        sub = abstractapi()

    a = field(float)
    b = field(float)
    result = field(float, record=False)

    @set_design(location=Menu)
    def add(self):
        """Add two values"""
        self.result.value = self.a.value + self.b.value

    @set_design(location=Menu)
    def sub(self):
        """Subtract two values"""
        self.result.value = self.a.value - self.b.value

However, after you calculated "4.0 + 2.0" and "6.0 - 3.0", macro will be recorded like

ui.a.value = 4.0
ui.b.value = 2.0
ui.add()
ui.a.value = 6.0
ui.b.value = 3.0
ui.sub()

This is perfectly reproducible but is not user friendly. If users want to run functions programmatically, they'll prefer styles like add(1, 2). Unfriendliness is more obvious when you changed the values of a and b alternately many times before adding them and saw its macro recorded like

macro

ui.a.value = 3.0
ui.b.value = 1.0
ui.a.value = 6.0
ui.b.value = 2.0
ui.a.value = 9.0
ui.b.value = 3.0
ui.add()

To avoid this, you can use the "bind" option.

from typing import Annotated
from magicclass import magicclass, magicmenu, field

@magicclass
class Main:
    @magicmenu
    class Menu:
        add = abstractapi()
        sub = abstractapi()

    a = field(float, record=False)  # <- don't record
    b = field(float, record=False)  # <- don't record
    result = field(float, record=False)

    @set_design(location=Menu)
    def add(self, a: Annotated[float, {"bind": a}], b: Annotated[float, {"bind": b}]):
        """Add two values"""
        self.result.value = a + b

    @set_design(location=Menu)
    def sub(self, a: Annotated[float, {"bind": a}], b: Annotated[float, {"bind": b}]):
        """Subtract two values"""
        self.result.value = a - b

Widget created by this code works completely identical to the previous one. Also, macro will be recorded in a better way.

macro

ui.add(a=4.0, b=2.0)
ui.sub(a=6.0, b=3.0)