Wrapping EventHandler by Table

Question

I am making a grid on the screen. The grid is composed of different expressions. I want all of them to have a Gray background, which turns into a White background upon a mouse click, each expression separately. Instead of the whole thing I only show it here for a row of 3 elements to simplify the example. This works:

DynamicModule[{col1 = Gray, col2 = Gray, col3 = Gray},
 Row[{
   EventHandler[Dynamic@Style[x, Background -> col1],
    {"MouseClicked" :> (col1 = 
        col1 /. {Gray -> White, White -> Gray})}](*End eventhandler*),
   EventHandler[Dynamic@Style[x, Background -> col2],
    {"MouseClicked" :> (col2 = 
        col2 /. {Gray -> White, White -> Gray})}](*End eventhandler*),
   EventHandler[Dynamic@Style[x, Background -> col3],
    {"MouseClicked" :> (col3 = 
        col3 /. {Gray -> White, White -> Gray})}](*End eventhandler*)
 }]
]

However, as soon as I try to automate the same code, i.e., instead of writing each element of the row separately, to use the Table statement it does not work. This is my trial of the automation that does not work:

DynamicModule[{col1 = Gray, col2 = Gray, col3 = Gray},
 Row[Table[
   EventHandler[
    Dynamic@Style[x, Background -> ToExpression["col" <> ToString[i]]],
    {"MouseClicked" :> (Background -> ToExpression["col" <> ToString[i]] =
        Background -> ToExpression["col" <> ToString[i]] /. {Gray -> Green, 
          Green -> Gray})}](*End eventhandler*),
   {i, 1, 3}]]
]

I would like to understand what is wrong. Is it possible to wrap EventHandler by a Table statement?

Answer 1

There are several issues here. You need to "inject" the symbol name into the expression using With (or similar) to prevent trying to make an assignment to ToExpression["col" <> ToString[i]]. Further, you've got spurious Background -> expressions which do not belong. (I also use Symbol in place of ToExpression.) That gives us:

DynamicModule[{col1 = Gray, col2 = Gray, col3 = Gray},
 Table[
   With[{bg = Symbol["col" <> ToString[i]]},
    EventHandler[Dynamic@Style["x", 50, Background -> bg],
     {"MouseClicked" :> (bg = bg /. {Gray -> Green, Green -> Gray})}]
   ],
   {i, 1, 3}
 ] // Row
]

There is a problem with this however, because the symbols you create inside Table, whether you use ToExpression or Symbol, are not localized as you expect. If you set col1 = "Fail!" outside of the module you will see this problem.

Probably a better method is to use indexed objects as follows:

DynamicModule[{col},
 col[_] = Gray;
 Table[
   With[{i = ii},
    EventHandler[Dynamic@Style["x", 50, Background -> col[i]],
     {"MouseClicked" :> (col[i] = col[i] /. {Gray -> Green, Green -> Gray})}]
   ],
   {ii, 1, 7}
 ] // Row
]

Answer 2

When handling symbols like you do, I find it best to avoid converting from and to strings. This is typically needed in other languages to do meta-programming, however due to Mathematicas philosophy being that everything is an expression, meta-programming can be accomplished simply by holding evaluation order. Here is a simple implementation of your functionality:

 SetAttributes[ClickAbleField, HoldAll]
 ClickAbleField[var_] := 
    EventHandler[
        Dynamic@Style[x, Background ->var]
    ,{"MouseClicked" :> (var = var /. {Gray -> Green, Green -> Gray})}
    ]

 DynamicModule[{col1 = Gray, col2 = Gray, col3 = Gray}, 
   Row[{Hold[col1], Hold[col2], Hold[col3]}] /. Hold -> ClickAbleField
 ]

Note that I use hold to prevent imidiate evaluation of the col variables, but also tell ClickAbleField to hold it's input arguments using the attribute HoldAll, such that the mentions inside it's definition will reference the unevaluted variable, and not it's current value.

If you have long lists of variables, you can also just pass them around in Hold and map functions over them like you would ususally do, then release the hold afterwards:

 DynamicModule[{col1 = Gray, col2 = Gray, col3 = Gray},
  Row[List @@ (ClickAbleField /@ Hold[col1, col2, col3])]
 ] 

If you want to generate something based on arbitrary lists of variables, you could use Unique to generate the variables:

vars = Table[Unique["col"], {5}];
Hold[DynamicModule[initvars, body]] /. {
  initvars -> Replace[Hold @@ vars, a_ :> (a = Gray), 1],
  body -> Row[ClickAbleField /@ vars]
} /. Hold -> List // First

Answer 3

You can also use FlipView

 Row[Table[FlipView[Style["x", 50, Background -> #] & /@ {Gray, Green, Red}], {5}]]