tkinter - GUI toolkit

The tkinter package (“Tk interface”) is the standard Python interface to the Tcl/Tk GUI toolkit. Both Tk and tkinter are available on most Unix platforms, including macOS, as well as on Windows systems.

Running python -m tkinter from the command line should open a window demonstrating a simple Tk interface, letting you know that tkinter is properly installed on your system, and also showing what version of Tcl/Tk is installed, so you can read the Tcl/Tk documentation specific to that version.

Tkinter supports a range of Tcl/Tk versions, built either with or without thread support. The official Python binary release bundles Tcl/Tk 8.6 threaded. See the source code for the _tkinter module for more information about supported versions.

Tkinter is not a thin wrapper, but adds a fair amount of its own logic to make the experience more pythonic. This documentation will concentrate on these additions and changes, and refer to the official Tcl/Tk documentation for details that are unchanged.¹

A Simple Hello World Program

import tkinter as tk

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

    def create_widgets(self):
        self.hi_there = tk.Button(self)
        self.hi_there["text"] = "Hello cadwork 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="blue",
                              command=self.master.destroy)
        self.quit.pack(side="bottom")

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

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

Button

import tkinter as tk

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

        self.ok = tk.Button(self)
        self.ok["text"] = "cadwork"
        self.ok["command"] = self.handler
        self.ok.pack()

    def handler(self):
        print("Button clicked")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    root = tk.Tk()
    root.geometry("500x300")
    app = MyApp(root)
    app.mainloop()

Coupling Widget Variables

import tkinter as tk

class App(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        super().__init__(master)
        self.pack()

        self.entrythingy = tk.Entry()
        self.entrythingy.pack()

        # Create the application variable.
        self.contents = tk.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

        # Define a callback for when the user hits return.
        # It prints the current value of the variable.
        self.entrythingy.bind('<Key-Return>',
                             self.print_contents)

    def print_contents(self, event):
        print("Hi. The current entry content is:",
              self.contents.get())

root = tk.Tk()
myapp = App(root)
myapp.mainloop()

PyQt 5

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import (QWidget, QToolTip,
                             QPushButton, QApplication,
                             QLabel)

class MyWindow(QWidget):

    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.initUI()

    def initUI(self):
        btn = QPushButton('Button', self)
        btn.resize(btn.sizeHint())
        btn.move(50, 50)

        self.setGeometry(300, 300, 300, 200)
        self.setWindowTitle('Qt5 Button')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    window = MyWindow()
    window.show()

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1. Python interface to Tcl/Tk ↩