Python 3.6.5 Documentation >  "tkinter" — Python interface to Tcl/Tk

"tkinter" — Python interface to Tcl/Tk
**************************************

**Source code:** Lib/tkinter/__init__.py

======================================================================

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:

Python Tkinter Resources
The Python Tkinter Topic Guide provides a great deal of
information on using Tk from Python and links to other sources of
information on Tk.

TKDocs
Extensive tutorial plus friendlier widget pages for some of the
widgets.

Tkinter reference: a GUI for Python
On-line reference material.

Tkinter docs from effbot
Online reference for tkinter supported by effbot.org.

Tcl/Tk manual
Official manual for the latest tcl/tk version.

Programming Python
Book by Mark Lutz, has excellent coverage of Tkinter.

Modern Tkinter for Busy Python Developers
Book by Mark Rozerman about building attractive and modern
graphical user interfaces with Python and Tkinter.

Python and Tkinter Programming
The book by John Grayson (ISBN 1-884777-81-3).

Tkinter Modules
===============

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 *

class tkinter.Tk(screenName=None, baseName=None, className='Tk', useTk=1)

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.

tkinter.Tcl(screenName=None, baseName=None, className='Tk', useTk=0)

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:

"tkinter.scrolledtext"
Text widget with a vertical scroll bar built in.

"tkinter.colorchooser"
Dialog to let the user choose a color.

"tkinter.commondialog"
Base class for the dialogs defined in the other modules listed
here.

"tkinter.filedialog"
Common dialogs to allow the user to specify a file to open or save.

"tkinter.font"
Utilities to help work with fonts.

"tkinter.messagebox"
Access to standard Tk dialog boxes.

"tkinter.simpledialog"
Basic dialogs and convenience functions.

"tkinter.dnd"
Drag-and-drop support for "tkinter". This is experimental and
should become deprecated when it is replaced with the Tk DND.

"turtle"
Turtle graphics in a Tk window.

Tkinter Life Preserver
======================

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:

* Tk was written by John Ousterhout while at Berkeley.

* Tkinter was written by Steen Lumholt and Guido van Rossum.

* This Life Preserver was written by Matt Conway at the University
of Virginia.

* The HTML rendering, and some liberal editing, was produced from a
FrameMaker version by Ken Manheimer.

* Fredrik Lundh elaborated and revised the class interface
descriptions, to get them current with Tk 4.2.

* Mike Clarkson converted the documentation to LaTeX, and compiled
the User Interface chapter of the reference manual.

How To Use This Section
-----------------------

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:

* The authors strongly suggest getting a copy of the Tk man pages.
Specifically, the man pages in the "manN" directory are most useful.
The "man3" man pages describe the C interface to the Tk library and
thus are not especially helpful for script writers.

* Addison-Wesley publishes a book called Tcl and the Tk Toolkit by
John Ousterhout (ISBN 0-201-63337-X) which is a good introduction to
Tcl and Tk for the novice. The book is not exhaustive, and for many
details it defers to the man pages.

* "tkinter/__init__.py" is a last resort for most, but can be a good
place to go when nothing else makes sense.

See also:

Tcl/Tk 8.6 man pages
The Tcl/Tk manual on www.tcl.tk.

ActiveState Tcl Home Page
The Tk/Tcl development is largely taking place at ActiveState.

Tcl and the Tk Toolkit
The book by John Ousterhout, the inventor of Tcl.

Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk
Brent Welch’s encyclopedic book.

A Simple Hello World Program
----------------------------

import tkinter as tk

class Application(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master=None):
super().__init__(master)
self.pack()
self.create_widgets()

def create_widgets(self):
self.hi_there = tk.Button(self)
self.hi_there["text"] = "Hello World\n(click me)"
self.hi_there["command"] = self.say_hi
self.hi_there.pack(side="top")

self.quit = tk.Button(self, text="QUIT", fg="red",
command=root.destroy)
self.quit.pack(side="bottom")

def say_hi(self):
print("hi there, everyone!")

root = tk.Tk()
app = Application(master=root)
app.mainloop()

A (Very) Quick Look at Tcl/Tk
=============================

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:

* These classes are provided for the purposes of organizing certain
functions under one namespace. They aren’t meant to be instantiated
independently.

* The "Tk" class is meant to be instantiated only once in an
application. Application programmers need not instantiate one
explicitly, the system creates one whenever any of the other classes
are instantiated.

* The "Widget" class is not meant to be instantiated, it is meant
only for subclassing to make “real” widgets (in C++, this is called
an ‘abstract class’).

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

*classCommand*
denotes which kind of widget to make (a button, a label, a menu…)

*newPathname*
is the new name for this widget. All names in Tk must be unique.
To help enforce this, widgets in Tk are named with *pathnames*,
just like files in a file system. The top level widget, the
*root*, is called "." (period) and children are delimited by more
periods. For example, ".myApp.controlPanel.okButton" might be the
name of a widget.

*options*
configure the widget’s appearance and in some cases, its behavior.
The options come in the form of a list of flags and values. Flags
are preceded by a ‘-‘, like Unix shell command flags, and values
are put in quotes if they are more than one word.

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.

Mapping Basic Tk into Tkinter
=============================

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")

How Tk and Tkinter are Related
==============================

From the top down:

Your App Here (Python)
A Python application makes a "tkinter" call.

tkinter (Python Package)
This call (say, for example, creating a button widget), is
implemented in the "tkinter" package, which is written in Python.
This Python function will parse the commands and the arguments and
convert them into a form that makes them look as if they had come
from a Tk script instead of a Python script.

_tkinter (C)
These commands and their arguments will be passed to a C function
in the "_tkinter" - note the underscore - extension module.

Tk Widgets (C and Tcl)
This C function is able to make calls into other C modules,
including the C functions that make up the Tk library. Tk is
implemented in C and some Tcl. The Tcl part of the Tk widgets is
used to bind certain default behaviors to widgets, and is executed
once at the point where the Python "tkinter" package is imported.
(The user never sees this stage).

Tk (C)
The Tk part of the Tk Widgets implement the final mapping to …

Xlib (C)
the Xlib library to draw graphics on the screen.

Handy Reference
===============

Setting Options
---------------

Options control things like the color and border width of a widget.
Options can be set in three ways:

At object creation time, using keyword arguments
fred = Button(self, fg="red", bg="blue")

After object creation, treating the option name like a dictionary
index
fred["fg"] = "red"
fred["bg"] = "blue"

Use the config() method to update multiple attrs subsequent to object
creation
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
----------

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)

Packer Options
--------------

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.

anchor
Anchor type. Denotes where the packer is to place each slave in
its parcel.

expand
Boolean, "0" or "1".

fill
Legal values: "'x'", "'y'", "'both'", "'none'".

ipadx and ipady
A distance - designating internal padding on each side of the slave
widget.

padx and pady
A distance - designating external padding on each side of the slave
widget.

side
Legal values are: "'left'", "'right'", "'top'", "'bottom'".

Coupling Widget Variables
-------------------------

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):
super().__init__(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())

The Window Manager
------------------

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:

import tkinter as tk

class App(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master=None):
super().__init__(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()

Tk Option Data Types
--------------------

anchor
Legal values are points of the compass: ""n"", ""ne"", ""e"",
""se"", ""s"", ""sw"", ""w"", ""nw"", and also ""center"".

bitmap
There are eight built-in, named bitmaps: "'error'", "'gray25'",
"'gray50'", "'hourglass'", "'info'", "'questhead'", "'question'",
"'warning'". To specify an X bitmap filename, give the full path
to the file, preceded with an "@", as in
""@/usr/contrib/bitmap/gumby.bit"".

boolean
You can pass integers 0 or 1 or the strings ""yes"" or ""no"".

callback
This is any Python function that takes no arguments. For example:

def print_it():
print("hi there")
fred["command"] = print_it

color
Colors can be given as the names of X colors in the rgb.txt file,
or as strings representing RGB values in 4 bit: ""#RGB"", 8 bit:
""#RRGGBB"", 12 bit” ""#RRRGGGBBB"", or 16 bit ""#RRRRGGGGBBBB""
ranges, where R,G,B here represent any legal hex digit. See page
160 of Ousterhout’s book for details.

cursor
The standard X cursor names from "cursorfont.h" can be used,
without the "XC_" prefix. For example to get a hand cursor
("XC_hand2"), use the string ""hand2"". You can also specify a
bitmap and mask file of your own. See page 179 of Ousterhout’s
book.

distance
Screen distances can be specified in either pixels or absolute
distances. Pixels are given as numbers and absolute distances as
strings, with the trailing character denoting units: "c" for
centimetres, "i" for inches, "m" for millimetres, "p" for printer’s
points. For example, 3.5 inches is expressed as ""3.5i"".

font
Tk uses a list font name format, such as "{courier 10 bold}". Font
sizes with positive numbers are measured in points; sizes with
negative numbers are measured in pixels.

geometry
This is a string of the form "widthxheight", where width and height
are measured in pixels for most widgets (in characters for widgets
displaying text). For example: "fred["geometry"] = "200x100"".

justify
Legal values are the strings: ""left"", ""center"", ""right"", and
""fill"".

region
This is a string with four space-delimited elements, each of which
is a legal distance (see above). For example: ""2 3 4 5"" and ""3i
2i 4.5i 2i"" and ""3c 2c 4c 10.43c"" are all legal regions.

relief
Determines what the border style of a widget will be. Legal values
are: ""raised"", ""sunken"", ""flat"", ""groove"", and ""ridge"".

scrollcommand
This is almost always the "set()" method of some scrollbar widget,
but can be any widget method that takes a single argument.

wrap:
Must be one of: ""none"", ""char"", or ""word"".

Bindings and Events
-------------------

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:

sequence
is a string that denotes the target kind of event. (See the bind
man page and page 201 of John Ousterhout’s book for details).

func
is a Python function, taking one argument, to be invoked when the
event occurs. An Event instance will be passed as the argument.
(Functions deployed this way are commonly known as *callbacks*.)

add
is optional, either "''" or "'+'". Passing an empty string denotes
that this binding is to replace any other bindings that this event
is associated with. Passing a "'+'" means that this function is to
be added to the list of functions bound to this event type.

For example:

def turn_red(self, event):
event.widget["activeforeground"] = "red"

self.button.bind("<Enter>", self.turn_red)

Notice how the widget field of the event is being accessed in the
"turn_red()" 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 |
+------+-----------------------+------+-----------------------+

The index Parameter
-------------------

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 widget indexes (index, view index, etc.)
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:

Text widget indexes
The index notation for Text widgets is very rich and is best
described in the Tk man pages.

Menu indexes (menu.invoke(), menu.entryconfig(), etc.)
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:

* an integer which refers to the numeric position of the entry in
the widget, counted from the top, starting with 0;

* the string ""active"", which refers to the menu position that
is currently under the cursor;

* the string ""last"" which refers to the last menu item;

* An integer preceded by "@", as in "@6", where the integer is
interpreted as a y pixel coordinate in the menu’s coordinate
system;

* the string ""none"", which indicates no menu entry at all, most
often used with menu.activate() to deactivate all entries, and
finally,

* a text string that is pattern matched against the label of the
menu entry, as scanned from the top of the menu to the bottom.
Note that this index type is considered after all the others,
which means that matches for menu items labelled "last",
"active", or "none" may be interpreted as the above literals,
instead.

Images
------

Bitmap/Pixelmap images can be created through the subclasses of
"tkinter.Image":

* "BitmapImage" can be used for X11 bitmap data.

* "PhotoImage" can be used for GIF and PPM/PGM color bitmaps.

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.

File Handlers
=============

Tk allows you to register and unregister a callback function which
will be called from the Tk mainloop when I/O is possible on a file
descriptor. Only one handler may be registered per file descriptor.
Example code:

import tkinter
widget = tkinter.Tk()
mask = tkinter.READABLE | tkinter.WRITABLE
widget.tk.createfilehandler(file, mask, callback)
...
widget.tk.deletefilehandler(file)

This feature is not available on Windows.

Since you don’t know how many bytes are available for reading, you may
not want to use the "BufferedIOBase" or "TextIOBase" "read()" or
"readline()" methods, since these will insist on reading a predefined
number of bytes. For sockets, the "recv()" or "recvfrom()" methods
will work fine; for other files, use raw reads or
"os.read(file.fileno(), maxbytecount)".

Widget.tk.createfilehandler(file, mask, func)

Registers the file handler callback function *func*. The *file*
argument may either be an object with a "fileno()" method (such as
a file or socket object), or an integer file descriptor. The *mask*
argument is an ORed combination of any of the three constants
below. The callback is called as follows:

callback(file, mask)

Widget.tk.deletefilehandler(file)

Unregisters a file handler.

tkinter.READABLE
tkinter.WRITABLE
tkinter.EXCEPTION

Constants used in the *mask* arguments.