Convenience wrapper around g_object_new

[QuLogic]

Looking at the docs for GObject, it appears that all init are simple wrappers around the C constructors, except for its most convenient one, the variadic g_object_new function. The closest match seems to be GLibObject.Object.new, which takes a GType, but unfortunately no property arguments. The remaining init all appear to take UnsafeMutablePointer to C strings or GValue which are pretty inconvenient to use from Swift.

Python solves this by taking keyword arguments and passing those as the properties. I don't think that that would be possible in Swift's form of variadic arguments.

Lua solves this by taking a table as first argument with property name/values. I guess that might work for Swift by taking a [String: Any].

[rhx]

I have added a convenience factory method to GLibObject.Object on the development branch now that takes a [String: Any] Dictionary for setting properties (as well as getters and setters that do the same). See lines 352-397 in GLibObject.swift on the Development branch:

static func new(type: GType, properties: [String: Any]) -> GLibObject.Object {

Let me know if that works for you.

[QuLogic]

Wow, that was quick, thanks! I think my only problem now is that ObjectProtocol.type is an instance property, but it should be a type property, so that I can get it before the instance is created. Right now I appear to have it working by using the _get_type function from the C header import.

As a followup, it would be nice if this wrapper were added to ObjectProtocol so that it works on any class (automatically supplying the correct GType.) This would be helpful for classes that had constructors that were not introspectable.

[rhx]

Shouldn't something like ObjectClassRef.metatypeReference give you the right type?

I'll have a look to see how this perhaps can be automated for Object types. If this doesn't work with a Protocol extension, it might need some magic from gir2swift.

[QuLogic]

Ah sorry, I did not think of looking at ObjectClass as it was not linked in Object or ObjectProtocol (which are cross-ref'd to each other), but I should have known to since I do know GObject. The ObjectClassRef.metatypeReference does work pretty well.

I tried to use as! MyType, which seems to compile, but then fails at runtime, I guess because it's not technically the right type on the Swift side. So it would be nice if it could be implemented directly on the Object types to get the right type directly.