Category: pro

Tkinter message boxes

This code will open some Tkinter question boxes:

Python 2.7
The Python 2.x version:

import Tkinter
import tkMessageBox
 
# Confirmation messagebox
tkMessageBox.askokcancel("Title","The application will be closed")
 
# Option messagebox
tkMessageBox.askyesno("Title","Do you want to save?")
 
# Try again messagebox
tkMessageBox.askretrycancel("Title","Installation failed, try again?")

Python 3
The Python 3.x version:

import tkinter
from tkinter import messagebox
 
messagebox.askokcancel("Title","The application will be closed")
messagebox.askyesno("Title","Do you want to save?")
messagebox.askretrycancel("Title","Installation failed, try again?")

Result:

Tk button with onClick event
To create a Tkinter window with a button use the example below. The program enters mainloop() which wait for events (user actions). We define the button which has a callback to the function callback(). master is the root window, the window where your button will appear in.

from Tkinter import *
 
master = Tk()
 
def callback():
    print "click!"
 
b = Button(master, text="OK", command=callback)
b.pack()
 
mainloop()

Related course

Python Desktop Apps with Tkinter

Tk image button
If you want an image button, use the PhotoImage class. We set the size of the window and the miminum size with the functions minsize() and geometry(). Example:

from Tkinter import *
 
master = Tk()
master.minsize(300,100)
master.geometry("320x100")
 
def callback():
    print "click!"
 
 
photo=PhotoImage(file="add.png")
b = Button(master,image=photo, command=callback, height=50, width=150)
b.pack()
 
mainloop()

Result:

Tk Image button with text label
If you want both an image and text, simply add the parameter compound=LEFT.

from Tkinter import *
 
master = Tk()
master.minsize(300,100)
master.geometry("320x100")
 
def callback():
    print "click!"
 
 
photo=PhotoImage(file="add.png")
b = Button(master,image=photo, text="OK", command=callback, height=50, width=150, compound=LEFT)
b.pack()
 
mainloop()

Result:

Button location
If you want to place the button on your coordinates do not use the pack() function but instead use the function place(x,y), as shown in the example below:

from Tkinter import *
 
master = Tk()
master.minsize(300,100)
master.geometry("320x100")
 
def callback():
    print "click!"
 
 
photo=PhotoImage(file="add.png")
b = Button(master,image=photo, text="OK", command=callback, height=50, width=150, compound=LEFT)
b.place(x = 20, y = 20)
 
mainloop()

Result:

Tk menubar

The Tkinter toolkit comes with all the basic widgets to create graphical applications. Almost every app has a main menu. As expected, Tkinter supports adding a main menu to your application window.

The screenshot below demonstrates a Tkinter based menu:

Related course

Python Desktop Apps with Tkinter

Tkinter menubar

You can create a simle menu with Tkinter using the code below. Every option (new, open, save.. ) should have its own callback.

from Tkinter import *
 
def donothing():
   x = 0
 
root = Tk()
 
menubar = Menu(root)
filemenu = Menu(menubar, tearoff=0)
filemenu.add_command(label="New", command=donothing)
filemenu.add_command(label="Open", command=donothing)
filemenu.add_command(label="Save", command=donothing)
filemenu.add_separator()
filemenu.add_command(label="Exit", command=root.quit)
menubar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=filemenu)
 
helpmenu = Menu(menubar, tearoff=0)
helpmenu.add_command(label="Help Index", command=donothing)
helpmenu.add_command(label="About...", command=donothing)
menubar.add_cascade(label="Help", menu=helpmenu)
 
root.config(menu=menubar)
root.mainloop()

We create the menubar with the call:

menubar = Menu(root)

where root is a Tk() object.

A menubar may contain zero or more submenus such as the file menu, edit menu, view menu, tools menu etcetera.

A submenu can be created using the same Menu() call, where the first argument is the menubar to attach to.

filemenu = Menu(menubar, tearoff=0)
menu = Menu(menubar, tearoff=0)

Individual options can be added to these submenus using the add_command() method:

filemenu.add_command(label="New", command=donothing)
filemenu.add_command(label="Open", command=donothing)
filemenu.add_command(label="Save", command=donothing)

In the example we created the callback function donothing() and linked every command to it for simplicity. An option is added using the add_comment() function. We call add_cascade() to add this menu list to the specific list.

Tk widgets

Tkinter has several widgets including:

Label
EditText
Images
Buttons (Discussed before)

In this article we will show how to use some of these Tkinter widgets. Keep in mind there’s a slight difference between Tkinter for Python 2.x and 3.x

Related course

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Label
To create a label we simply call the Label() class and pack it. The numbers padx and pady are the horizontal and vertical padding.

from Tkinter import *
 
root = Tk()
root.title('Python Tk Examples @ pythonspot.com')
Label(root, text='Python').pack(pady=20,padx=50)
 
root.mainloop()

EditText (Entry widget)
To get user input you can use an Entry widget.

from Tkinter import *
 
root = Tk()
root.title('Python Tk Examples @ pythonspot.com')
 
var = StringVar()
textbox = Entry(root, textvariable=var)
textbox.focus_set()
textbox.pack(pady=10, padx=10)
 
root.mainloop()

Result:

Images
Tk has a widget to display an image, the PhotoImage. It is quite easy to load an image:

from Tkinter import *
import os
 
root = Tk()
img = PhotoImage(file="logo2.png")
panel = Label(root, image = img)
panel.pack(side = "bottom", fill = "both", expand = "yes")
root.mainloop()

Result:

GUI editor
An overview of Tkinter GUI editors can be found here: http://wiki.tcl.tk/4056

TkInter message box

The Tkinter tkMessageBox has various methods to display a message box.

There is a slight difference between Tkinter for Python 2.7 and Python 3.
To find your Python version try one of these commands:

python --version
python3 --version

Related courses

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Tkinter Message box

To show a minimalistic Tkinter message box, use the function showinfo() where the parameters are the window title and text.

The showinfo() function is in a different module depending on the Python version.

Python 3.x

from tkinter import messagebox
 
messagebox.showinfo("Title", "a Tk MessageBox")

Python 2.7

import Tkinter
import tkMessageBox
 
tkMessageBox.showinfo("Title", "a Tk MessageBox")

Tkinter showerror, showwarning and showinfo

Tkinter includes several other message boxes:

showerror()
showwarning()
showinfo()

Python 3.x

import tkinter
from tkinter import messagebox
 
# hide main window
root = tkinter.Tk()
root.withdraw()
 
# message box display
messagebox.showerror("Error", "Error message")
messagebox.showwarning("Warning","Warning message")
messagebox.showinfo("Information","Informative message")

Python 2.7

import Tkinter
import tkMessageBox
 
# An error box
tkMessageBox.showerror("Error","No disk space left on device")
 
# A warning box 
tkMessageBox.showwarning("Warning","Could not start service")
 
# An information box
tkMessageBox.showinfo("Information","Created in Python.")

You may like: Tkinter Question Dialog or More Tkinter

Tkinter tkFileDialog module

tkFileDialog is a module with open and save dialog functions.
Instead of implementing those in Tkinter GUI on your own.

Related courses

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Overview
An overview of file dialogs:

Function	Parameters	Purpose
.askopenfilename	Directory, Title, Extension	To open file: Dialog that requests selection of an existing file.
.asksaveasfilename	Directory, Title, Extension)	To save file: Dialog that requests creation or replacement of a file.
.askdirectory	None	To open directory

Tkinter Open File

The askopenfilename function to creates an file dialog object. The extensions are shown in the bottom of the form (Files of type). The code below will simply show the dialog and return the filename. If a user presses cancel the filename is empty. On a Windows machine change the initialdir to “C:\”.

Python 2.7 version:

from Tkinter import *from Tkinter import *
import Tkinter, Tkconstants, tkFileDialog
 
root = Tk()
root.filename = tkFileDialog.askopenfilename(initialdir = "/",title = "Select file",filetypes = (("jpeg files","*.jpg"),("all files","*.*")))
print (root.filename)

Python 3 version:

from tkinter import filedialog
from tkinter import *
 
root = Tk()
root.filename =  filedialog.askopenfilename(initialdir = "/",title = "Select file",filetypes = (("jpeg files","*.jpg"),("all files","*.*")))
print (root.filename)

Here is an example (on Linux):

Tkinter Save File

The asksaveasfilename function prompts the user with a save file dialog.

Python 2.7 version

from Tkinter import *
import Tkinter, Tkconstants, tkFileDialog
 
root = Tk()
root.filename = tkFileDialog.asksaveasfilename(initialdir = "/",title = "Select file",filetypes = (("jpeg files","*.jpg"),("all files","*.*")))
print (root.filename)

Python 3 version

from tkinter import filedialog
from tkinter import *
 
root = Tk()
root.filename =  filedialog.asksaveasfilename(initialdir = "/",title = "Select file",filetypes = (("jpeg files","*.jpg"),("all files","*.*")))
print (root.filename)

Tkinter Open Directory

The askdirectory presents the user with a popup for directory selection.

Python 2.7 version

from  Tkinter import *
import Tkinter, Tkconstants, tkFileDialog
root = Tk()
root.directory = tkFileDialog.askdirectory()
print (root.directory)

tkinter-askdirectory — tkinter askdirectory

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Category: pro

tkinter askquestion dialog

Tkinter question dialog

Tkinter message boxes

Tk window and button

Tk menubar

Tkinter menubar

Tk widgets

TkInter message box

Tkinter Message box

Tkinter showerror, showwarning and showinfo

Tkinter tkFileDialog module

Tkinter Open File

Tkinter Save File

Tkinter Open Directory

Tkinter question dialog

Tkinter message boxes

Tkinter menubar

Tkinter Message box

Tkinter showerror, showwarning and showinfo

Tkinter Open File

Tkinter Save File

Tkinter Open Directory

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