The tkinter package (“Tk interface”) is the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit. Both Tk and tkinter are available on most Unix platforms, as well as on Windows systems. (Tk itself is not part of Python; it is maintained at ActiveState.) You can check that tkinter is properly installed on your system by running python -m tkinter from the command line; this should open a window demonstrating a simple Tk interface.
See also
Most of the time, tkinter is all you really need, but a number of additional modules are available as well. The Tk interface is located in a binary module named _tkinter. This module contains the low-level interface to Tk, and should never be used directly by application programmers. It is usually a shared library (or DLL), but might in some cases be statically linked with the Python interpreter.
In addition to the Tk interface module, tkinter includes a number of Python modules, tkinter.constants being one of the most important. Importing tkinter will automatically import tkinter.constants, so, usually, to use Tkinter all you need is a simple import statement:
import tkinter
Or, more often:
from tkinter import *
The Tk class is instantiated without arguments. This creates a toplevel widget of Tk which usually is the main window of an application. Each instance has its own associated Tcl interpreter.
The Tcl() function is a factory function which creates an object much like that created by the Tk class, except that it does not initialize the Tk subsystem. This is most often useful when driving the Tcl interpreter in an environment where one doesn’t want to create extraneous toplevel windows, or where one cannot (such as Unix/Linux systems without an X server). An object created by the Tcl() object can have a Toplevel window created (and the Tk subsystem initialized) by calling its loadtk() method.
Other modules that provide Tk support include:
This section is not designed to be an exhaustive tutorial on either Tk or Tkinter. Rather, it is intended as a stop gap, providing some introductory orientation on the system.
Credits:
This section is designed in two parts: the first half (roughly) covers background material, while the second half can be taken to the keyboard as a handy reference.
When trying to answer questions of the form “how do I do blah”, it is often best to find out how to do”blah” in straight Tk, and then convert this back into the corresponding tkinter call. Python programmers can often guess at the correct Python command by looking at the Tk documentation. This means that in order to use Tkinter, you will have to know a little bit about Tk. This document can’t fulfill that role, so the best we can do is point you to the best documentation that exists. Here are some hints:
See also
from tkinter import *
class Application(Frame):
def say_hi(self):
print("hi there, everyone!")
def createWidgets(self):
self.QUIT = Button(self)
self.QUIT["text"] = "QUIT"
self.QUIT["fg"] = "red"
self.QUIT["command"] = self.quit
self.QUIT.pack({"side": "left"})
self.hi_there = Button(self)
self.hi_there["text"] = "Hello",
self.hi_there["command"] = self.say_hi
self.hi_there.pack({"side": "left"})
def __init__(self, master=None):
Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.pack()
self.createWidgets()
root = Tk()
app = Application(master=root)
app.mainloop()
root.destroy()
The class hierarchy looks complicated, but in actual practice, application programmers almost always refer to the classes at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
Notes:
To make use of this reference material, there will be times when you will need to know how to read short passages of Tk and how to identify the various parts of a Tk command. (See section Mapping Basic Tk into Tkinter for the tkinter equivalents of what’s below.)
Tk scripts are Tcl programs. Like all Tcl programs, Tk scripts are just lists of tokens separated by spaces. A Tk widget is just its class, the options that help configure it, and the actions that make it do useful things.
To make a widget in Tk, the command is always of the form:
classCommand newPathname options
For example:
button .fred -fg red -text "hi there"
^ ^ \______________________/
| | |
class new options
command widget (-opt val -opt val ...)
Once created, the pathname to the widget becomes a new command. This new widget command is the programmer’s handle for getting the new widget to perform some action. In C, you’d express this as someAction(fred, someOptions), in C++, you would express this as fred.someAction(someOptions), and in Tk, you say:
.fred someAction someOptions
Note that the object name, .fred, starts with a dot.
As you’d expect, the legal values for someAction will depend on the widget’s class: .fred disable works if fred is a button (fred gets greyed out), but does not work if fred is a label (disabling of labels is not supported in Tk).
The legal values of someOptions is action dependent. Some actions, like disable, require no arguments, others, like a text-entry box’s delete command, would need arguments to specify what range of text to delete.
Class commands in Tk correspond to class constructors in Tkinter.
button .fred =====> fred = Button()
The master of an object is implicit in the new name given to it at creation time. In Tkinter, masters are specified explicitly.
button .panel.fred =====> fred = Button(panel)
The configuration options in Tk are given in lists of hyphened tags followed by values. In Tkinter, options are specified as keyword-arguments in the instance constructor, and keyword-args for configure calls or as instance indices, in dictionary style, for established instances. See section Setting Options on setting options.
button .fred -fg red =====> fred = Button(panel, fg="red")
.fred configure -fg red =====> fred["fg"] = red
OR ==> fred.config(fg="red")
In Tk, to perform an action on a widget, use the widget name as a command, and follow it with an action name, possibly with arguments (options). In Tkinter, you call methods on the class instance to invoke actions on the widget. The actions (methods) that a given widget can perform are listed in tkinter/__init__.py.
.fred invoke =====> fred.invoke()
To give a widget to the packer (geometry manager), you call pack with optional arguments. In Tkinter, the Pack class holds all this functionality, and the various forms of the pack command are implemented as methods. All widgets in tkinter are subclassed from the Packer, and so inherit all the packing methods. See the tkinter.tix module documentation for additional information on the Form geometry manager.
pack .fred -side left =====> fred.pack(side="left")
Options control things like the color and border width of a widget. Options can be set in three ways:
fred = Button(self, fg="red", bg="blue")
fred["fg"] = "red"
fred["bg"] = "blue"
fred.config(fg="red", bg="blue")
For a complete explanation of a given option and its behavior, see the Tk man pages for the widget in question.
Note that the man pages list “STANDARD OPTIONS” and “WIDGET SPECIFIC OPTIONS” for each widget. The former is a list of options that are common to many widgets, the latter are the options that are idiosyncratic to that particular widget. The Standard Options are documented on the options(3) man page.
No distinction between standard and widget-specific options is made in this document. Some options don’t apply to some kinds of widgets. Whether a given widget responds to a particular option depends on the class of the widget; buttons have a command option, labels do not.
The options supported by a given widget are listed in that widget’s man page, or can be queried at runtime by calling the config() method without arguments, or by calling the keys() method on that widget. The return value of these calls is a dictionary whose key is the name of the option as a string (for example, 'relief') and whose values are 5-tuples.
Some options, like bg are synonyms for common options with long names (bg is shorthand for “background”). Passing the config() method the name of a shorthand option will return a 2-tuple, not 5-tuple. The 2-tuple passed back will contain the name of the synonym and the “real” option (such as ('bg', 'background')).
| Index | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | option name | 'relief' |
| 1 | option name for database lookup | 'relief' |
| 2 | option class for database lookup | 'Relief' |
| 3 | default value | 'raised' |
| 4 | current value | 'groove' |
Example:
>>> print(fred.config())
{'relief' : ('relief', 'relief', 'Relief', 'raised', 'groove')}
Of course, the dictionary printed will include all the options available and their values. This is meant only as an example.
The packer is one of Tk’s geometry-management mechanisms. Geometry managers are used to specify the relative positioning of the positioning of widgets within their container - their mutual master. In contrast to the more cumbersome placer (which is used less commonly, and we do not cover here), the packer takes qualitative relationship specification - above, to the left of, filling, etc - and works everything out to determine the exact placement coordinates for you.
The size of any master widget is determined by the size of the “slave widgets” inside. The packer is used to control where slave widgets appear inside the master into which they are packed. You can pack widgets into frames, and frames into other frames, in order to achieve the kind of layout you desire. Additionally, the arrangement is dynamically adjusted to accommodate incremental changes to the configuration, once it is packed.
Note that widgets do not appear until they have had their geometry specified with a geometry manager. It’s a common early mistake to leave out the geometry specification, and then be surprised when the widget is created but nothing appears. A widget will appear only after it has had, for example, the packer’s pack() method applied to it.
The pack() method can be called with keyword-option/value pairs that control where the widget is to appear within its container, and how it is to behave when the main application window is resized. Here are some examples:
fred.pack() # defaults to side = "top"
fred.pack(side="left")
fred.pack(expand=1)
For more extensive information on the packer and the options that it can take, see the man pages and page 183 of John Ousterhout’s book.
The current-value setting of some widgets (like text entry widgets) can be connected directly to application variables by using special options. These options are variable, textvariable, onvalue, offvalue, and value. This connection works both ways: if the variable changes for any reason, the widget it’s connected to will be updated to reflect the new value.
Unfortunately, in the current implementation of tkinter it is not possible to hand over an arbitrary Python variable to a widget through a variable or textvariable option. The only kinds of variables for which this works are variables that are subclassed from a class called Variable, defined in tkinter.
There are many useful subclasses of Variable already defined: StringVar, IntVar, DoubleVar, and BooleanVar. To read the current value of such a variable, call the get() method on it, and to change its value you call the set() method. If you follow this protocol, the widget will always track the value of the variable, with no further intervention on your part.
For example:
class App(Frame):
def __init__(self, master=None):
Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.pack()
self.entrythingy = Entry()
self.entrythingy.pack()
# here is the application variable
self.contents = StringVar()
# set it to some value
self.contents.set("this is a variable")
# tell the entry widget to watch this variable
self.entrythingy["textvariable"] = self.contents
# and here we get a callback when the user hits return.
# we will have the program print out the value of the
# application variable when the user hits return
self.entrythingy.bind('<Key-Return>',
self.print_contents)
def print_contents(self, event):
print("hi. contents of entry is now ---->",
self.contents.get())
In Tk, there is a utility command, wm, for interacting with the window manager. Options to the wm command allow you to control things like titles, placement, icon bitmaps, and the like. In tkinter, these commands have been implemented as methods on the Wm class. Toplevel widgets are subclassed from the Wm class, and so can call the Wm methods directly.
To get at the toplevel window that contains a given widget, you can often just refer to the widget’s master. Of course if the widget has been packed inside of a frame, the master won’t represent a toplevel window. To get at the toplevel window that contains an arbitrary widget, you can call the _root() method. This method begins with an underscore to denote the fact that this function is part of the implementation, and not an interface to Tk functionality.
Here are some examples of typical usage:
from tkinter import *
class App(Frame):
def __init__(self, master=None):
Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.pack()
# create the application
myapp = App()
#
# here are method calls to the window manager class
#
myapp.master.title("My Do-Nothing Application")
myapp.master.maxsize(1000, 400)
# start the program
myapp.mainloop()
This is any Python function that takes no arguments. For example:
def print_it():
print("hi there")
fred["command"] = print_it
The bind method from the widget command allows you to watch for certain events and to have a callback function trigger when that event type occurs. The form of the bind method is:
def bind(self, sequence, func, add=''):
where:
For example:
def turnRed(self, event):
event.widget["activeforeground"] = "red"
self.button.bind("<Enter>", self.turnRed)
Notice how the widget field of the event is being accessed in the turnRed() callback. This field contains the widget that caught the X event. The following table lists the other event fields you can access, and how they are denoted in Tk, which can be useful when referring to the Tk man pages.
| Tk | Tkinter Event Field | Tk | Tkinter Event Field |
|---|---|---|---|
| %f | focus | %A | char |
| %h | height | %E | send_event |
| %k | keycode | %K | keysym |
| %s | state | %N | keysym_num |
| %t | time | %T | type |
| %w | width | %W | widget |
| %x | x | %X | x_root |
| %y | y | %Y | y_root |
A number of widgets require “index” parameters to be passed. These are used to point at a specific place in a Text widget, or to particular characters in an Entry widget, or to particular menu items in a Menu widget.
Entry widgets have options that refer to character positions in the text being displayed. You can use these tkinter functions to access these special points in text widgets:
Some options and methods for menus manipulate specific menu entries. Anytime a menu index is needed for an option or a parameter, you may pass in:
Bitmap/Pixelmap images can be created through the subclasses of tkinter.Image:
Either type of image is created through either the file or the data option (other options are available as well).
The image object can then be used wherever an image option is supported by some widget (e.g. labels, buttons, menus). In these cases, Tk will not keep a reference to the image. When the last Python reference to the image object is deleted, the image data is deleted as well, and Tk will display an empty box wherever the image was used.