A simple menu with submenus

CascadeHush

I thought someone might find this useful. Also, feedback on code style ('the python way of doing things') would be appreciated, I've been coding in Python for less than 12 hours.

It is a way to present a simple menu with submenus, and returns the selections for further processing. The example provided is from a food diary script I'm converting from Workflow that I used to use with Day One.

I know there is no kind of error checking at all, for my purposes I don't really think that's necessary.

Should work in Pythonista too.

import dialogs

def menuWithSubmenus(menuTitle, menuList):
    #Present main menu and get user choice
    mainMenu = ([d['mainMenuOption'] for d in menuList])
    choice = dialogs.list_dialog(title=menuTitle, items=mainMenu, multiple=False)

    #Present sub-menu and get user choice
    subMenu = (next((item for item in menuList if item['mainMenuOption'] == choice))['subMenuOptions'])
    subChoice = dialogs.list_dialog(title=menuTitle, items=subMenu, multiple=False)

    return { 'mainMenuOption':choice, 'subMenuOption': subChoice }


#Example Usage
menuItems = (
    { 'mainMenuOption':'Cereal', 'subMenuOptions': ('Saltana Bran', 'Wheat Biscuits') },
    { 'mainMenuOption':'Fruit',  'subMenuOptions': ('Apple', 'Banana', 'Mandarine') }
)

print (menuWithSubmenus('Meal/Snack Type',menuItems))

dgelessus

This is pretty nice, especially for someone who hasn't used Python that long yet. :) It does indeed work properly in Pythonista as well - even in Python 3.

Regarding the code style, here are a few small suggestions:

In Python, variable/function/method/parameter names are usually written in snake_case, rather than dromedaryCase as is common in Java and such.
The multiple parameter of dialogs.list_dialog defaults to False, so you don't need to explicitly set it to False for each call.
Using a dictionary to return multiple values isn't usually done in Python. This is in part because Python has no easy way to "unpack" multiple values from a dictionary - instead you need to store the dictionary in a variable, and then access each value individually. If you have a small, fixed number of return values, you can return a tuple, which can be easily unpacked like main_option, sub_option = menu_with_submenus(...). You can also use collections.namedtuple to make a custom tuple type with named fields. If you have more than a few fields, you might want to write a class instead (but that's probably overkill in this case).

CascadeHush

Thanks, that's really helpful :)