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tkinter askquestion

Tkinter supports showing a message box. Tkinter is a GUI library for Python, it lets you make desktop applications.

The implementation you need depends on your Python version, you should use Python 3 or newer (2 is legacy).

To test your Python version:

python -- version

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Tkinter question dialog

Tkinter can be used to crete a prompt that ask the users a question.

Python 2.x
The Python 2.x version:

import Tkinter
import tkMessageBox

result = tkMessageBox.askyesno("Python","Would you like to save the data?")
print result

Python 3
The Python 3.x version:


import tkinter
from tkinter import messagebox
 
messagebox.askokcancel("Python","Would you like to save the data?")

Result:

tk question tk question

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:

questions tk Tk question box

download tkinter examples

tkinter button

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()
tk button tk button

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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 tk image button

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:

tk button with text and image tk button with text and image

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 button location tk button location

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.

download tkinter examples

tkinter menu bar

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:

tk menu Tkinter menu

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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.

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.

download tkinter examples

tkinter 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

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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:

tk entry tk entry

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:

python tk image python tk image

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.

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

download tkinter examples

tkinter messagebox

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

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Tkinter Message box

Tkinter Message box TkMessage boxTo 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-dialog Tk messagebox dialog

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

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.

download tkinter examples

tkinter filedialog

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

This page is a collection of python tkinter file dialogs. The code is displayed here along with screenshots. Dialogs included in tkinter let you ask for a filename or directory.

tkinter file dialogs are easy to use, but not that easy to find out how to use. The main problem is that there is no simple example of how to do it. This article tries to fill the gap.

Related course:

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).

tkinter.tk.askopenfilename is an extension of the askopenfilename function provided in Tcl/Tk.

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):

tkfiledialog Tkinter askopenfilename tkfiledialog Tkinter askopenfilename

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

Consider a scenario where your program needs to get a directory, the user clicked on the ok button and now you want to determine the path.

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

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.

download tkinter examples

tkinter dropdown

Tkinter supports dropdown menus. This is similar to your standard combobox on your operating system.

The widget is called OptionMenu and the parameters you need are: frame, tk variable and a dictionary with choices.

tk dropdown menu

Related course:

Tkinter dropdown example

The example below creates a Tkinter window with a combobox. Code to create a simple Tkinter menu with a dropdown list:


from Tkinter import *
import Tkinter as ttk
from ttk import *

root = Tk()
root.title("Tk dropdown example")

# Add a grid
mainframe = Frame(root)
mainframe.grid(column=0,row=0, sticky=(N,W,E,S) )
mainframe.columnconfigure(0, weight = 1)
mainframe.rowconfigure(0, weight = 1)
mainframe.pack(pady = 100, padx = 100)

# Create a Tkinter variable
tkvar = StringVar(root)

# Dictionary with options
choices = { 'Pizza','Lasagne','Fries','Fish','Potatoe'}
tkvar.set('Pizza') # set the default option

popupMenu = OptionMenu(mainframe, tkvar, *choices)
Label(mainframe, text="Choose a dish").grid(row = 1, column = 1)
popupMenu.grid(row = 2, column =1)

# on change dropdown value
def change_dropdown(*args):
    print( tkvar.get() )

# link function to change dropdown
tkvar.trace('w', change_dropdown)

root.mainloop()

It starts by creating a Tk object and pass it to a tkinter frame created with Frame()


root = Tk()
root.title("Tk dropdown example")
mainframe = Frame(root)

A grid is added to the frame which will hold the combo-box.


mainframe.grid(column=0,row=0, sticky=(N,W,E,S) )
mainframe.columnconfigure(0, weight = 1)
mainframe.rowconfigure(0, weight = 1)
mainframe.pack(pady = 100, padx = 100)

The popup menu contains a list of options which is defined in the variable choices.
A Tkinter variable is created with the line: 


tkvar = StringVar(root)

The default value of the variable is set with the .set() method.
We create the Tkinter combobox with:


popupMenu = OptionMenu(mainframe, tkvar, *choices)

And link the callback method change_dropdown to this combobox.

If you are new to programming Tkinter, I highly recommend this course.