← All projects

Part 3 of this project

Forms

Validate a path before navigating

Goal for this part

Validate a path before navigating.

Treat 03-Forms as the source of truth for this checkpoint. If your local tree drifted, re-clone that folder rather than mixing files from neighbors.

What you should already know

You do not need prior GTK experience for part 1. Later parts assume you finished the earlier snapshots on the same machine.

  • You can open a terminal and run python3
  • You are comfortable editing a .py file and saving it
  • You have a desktop session (not a headless SSH box without display forwarding)

Why GTK fits Pathwalk

GTK powers many Linux file managers. Teaching Pathwalk means directories, selection, and safe delete—not reinventing the kernel.

Places sidebar + file list is the familiar two-pane pattern. Use pathlib for traversal and confirm before destructive ops.

Checkpoint

After you run the snapshot, you should recognize the behavior described in the goal—before you move on. If the window (or server) never appears, stop and fix the run steps.

Code shape

Snapshots stay small on purpose. Look for this kind of core call as you read the folder:

for p in Path(folder).iterdir(): ...

How to run it

Clone the teaching repo, open 03-Forms, install what the README asks for, then run python3 app.py.

git clone https://github.com/michaeldunga1/fcc-gtk-files.git
cd fcc-gtk-files/03-Forms
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r ../requirements.txt
python3 app.py

Common mistakes

  • Ignoring platform-specific install notes in the snapshot README
  • Accepting empty or invalid input without a message
  • Validating only in the UI and never in the save path
  • Using placeholder text as if it were real data

Related tutorials