[chrismfftw]

Background
I have a raspberry pi setup on a touch screen with a GPRS modem attached. I am attempting to implement an addon that will let me view SMS.

I have a service created that runs my AT cmds to get new text messages/phone calls and store them in my database(MySQL) my service also sends a notification alert saying xyz has messaged you.

Currently this is setup as a website. My database calls work well and display information on my webservice.

Database -> Contacts, SMS_DB, callhistory_DB

my web service has a page called ViewMessages. Its nothing more than a html list with contact information and the number of unread messages as populated by my python script/database call.
when you click the contact name it puts you into the text view, where you can see previous messages from both yourself and the sender along with a textbox that allows me to post new AT cmds to my GSM to send messages.

I would like to integrate this into my media center, so that I can see text messages quickly without backing out of kodi.


Im novice with kodi and poor with xml. How would I best implement this and does kodi even allow for my workflow?


TL;DR;

Is it possible to create an addon that has multiple views, where I can also see received text messages from mysql?

[Roman_V_M]

It seems that you need to create a UI for your addon inside Kodi. There are 3 ways to do that:
1. xbmcgui.Window/WindowDialog classes for a container + Control* classes for widgets.
+: Everything is done entirely in Python.
-: Not very convenient -- you need to operate in absolute coordinates and provide your own visual elements for Controls (widgets). Also this approach has somewhat limited capabilities.
I have created PyXBMCt micro-framework to overcome the 1-st issue.

2. xbmcgui.WindowXML/WindowXMLDialog classes + its own addon skin.
+: More capabilities.
-: You need to know Kodi skinning as well because all visual elements are defined in addon's mini-skin.

3. xbmcgui.Dialog class can be used as "poor man's GUI".
+: Simplicity.
-: Very limited capabilities.

[chrismfftw]

Thank you Roman for the detailed options. Ill look through all the options and implement what I can. Ill keep this thread open with my creation hopefully when its complete people will find it useful.

If any one comes up with any other ideas please post! I appreciate all input


Are there any gui tools I can use to create a simple gui?