The other day I saw a question on StackOverflow about how to dynamically destroy and create panels after a certain amount of time has passed. I told the fellow that he could use the examples from one of my blog articles where I destroyed and created buttons, but the dude just didn’t get it. So I wrote a simple example where the panel displays a count down and then destroys itself and is promptly replaced with another panel.

Here’s the code for your viewing pleasure:

import wx
 
########################################################################
class PanelOne(wx.Panel):
    """"""
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, parent):
        """Constructor"""
        wx.Panel.__init__(self, parent)
 
        self.countdown = wx.StaticText(self, label="This panel will self-destruct in 10 seconds")
 
 
########################################################################
class PanelTwo(wx.Panel):
    """"""
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, parent):
        """Constructor"""
        wx.Panel.__init__(self, parent)
 
        txt = wx.StaticText(self, label="Panel Two")
 
 
########################################################################
class MainFrame(wx.Frame):
    """"""
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self):
        """Constructor"""
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, None, title="Panel Smacker")
        self.panelOne = PanelOne(self)
        self.time2die = 10
 
        self.timer = wx.Timer(self)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_TIMER, self.update, self.timer)
        self.timer.Start(1000)
 
        self.sizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
        self.sizer.Add(self.panelOne, 1, wx.EXPAND)
        self.SetSizer(self.sizer)
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def update(self, event):
        """"""
        if self.time2die < 0:
            self.panelOne.Destroy()
            self.panelTwo = PanelTwo(self)
            self.sizer.Add(self.panelTwo, 1, wx.EXPAND)
            self.Layout()
            self.timer.Stop()
        else:
            msg = "This panel will self-destruct in %s seconds" % self.time2die
            self.panelOne.countdown.SetLabel(msg)
        self.time2die -= 1
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = wx.App(False)
    frame = MainFrame()
    frame.Show()
    app.MainLoop()

When you run this code, you should see something like this:

It will countdown for 10 seconds and then you’ll see this:

If you want to learn more about timers, I wrote an article on that as well. Enjoy!