I need to send updates to tkinter from another thread, which should be handled immediately. Sadly Tkinter freezes whenever I try multithreading.
My Attempt:
I've read through several Tkinter-threaded pages but didn't find anything that works well, since most of them try creating a new thread on button.click(), which doesn't help here.
I tried not calling .mainloop() and instead calling the update functions myself, whenever an update comes in:
#GUI
def update(self, string):
self._interactor.config(text=string)
#interactor is a button
self._tk.update_idletasks()
self._tk.update()
This works fine until I use a loop with sleep() in the master to constantly update the text. GUI and master are frozen during sleep().
So I tried to use a threaded timer as discussed here.
#MASTER
gui=gui_remote(self)
def changetext():
text=self.gettextsomewhere()
self._gui.update(text)
loop=RepeatedTimer(5, changetext)
But this just leads to the following error, thrown by Tkinter:
RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop
Having a hard time on how to solve this. Is it possible to call a GUI class on main thread and still have proper access to its functions?
How I got to this point:
For my project, I need a button, which represents several Buttons.
Every y (eg. 1.5) seconds, the displayed text should be updated to a new one from the outside.
Also, I want to keep GUI, Controller and Data separated, (using blueprint methods) so that later adjustments on each of them will be easier.
I already got it to work, using TK's .after() function, but I had to use GUI and controlling functions closely together.
My Plan
Have a GUI class, which is updateable from another object via simple public functions. The other object (the master) should be able to create a GUI object and call the GUI's update functions with new data every y seconds.
When the GUI button is clicked, simply call a certain method at master every time:
#GUI example
from tkinter import Tk, Button, Frame, Label
class gui_sample:
def __init__(self, master):
"""This is the very simple GUI"""
self._master=master
self._tk=Tk()
self._interactor= Button(self._tk, text="Apfelsaft", command=self._click)
self._interactor.pack()
self._tk.mainloop()
def update(self, string):
"""Handle interactor update"""
self._interactor.config(text=string)
def _click(self):
self._master.click()
#MASTER
from gui_module import *
class Controller:
def __init__(self):
self._gui=gui_sample(self)
self._run()
def _run(self):
#call this every 5 seconds
new_text=self.gettextfromsomewhere()
self._gui.update(new_text)
def click():
#do something
pass
#this code is just a blueprint it probably does nothing
My Problem:
I don't want the master to use TK functions since I might switch to another UI module later and keep the master's functionality. The master will constantly loop through what's being displayed next and needs to be accessible at the same time. Using loops with sleep() isn't a good idea since they will block both, the master and the GUI. Calling .mainloop() is also problematic since it will block all other programs. The gui should always respond to updates and not ask for them.
Related
I am trying to do an app using tkinter that gets information from some internet sources after entering stuff in an input box and then clicking a "load" button.
The button function reads the stuff string from the input box. After its loaded it retrieves some info from the internet (which is blocking), and then update some labels with this information.
Obviously, when clicking the load button, the app freezes a micro second due to the requests blocking the flow of the program.
Once the info is retrieved, and the labels updated, some other labels would need to keep retrieving data from the internet constantly. To do this I have them done a bit like this:
Note: the print statements are done for testing, so I can see them on the console
def update_price_label(self):
# TODO fix .after() duplicate
print("Updating stuff")
price = self.get_formatted_price(self.stuff) # this is another function being called, passing an argument of the stuff that has been loaded by the load button, this function returns price
self.PriceValue.configure(text=price) # updates the price label with the price obtained from the function above
self.PriceValue.after(1000, self.update_price_label) # sets a scheduler to run this function to update the price label each second
Above there is a function that is called upon clicking "load" for a label that needs to be updated all the time, this function calls another function that receives an argument, and then returns the price. Then the label is updated, and then its scheduled in an endless loop using the after() method of the priceValue label control. This way, the price gets updated all the time
def get_formatted__price(self, stuff):
price = RETRIEVE PRICE # this is not a real function, but this is the request being done to the server to get the price
return f"{price:.12f} # sets decimal numbers
This function is called by update_price_label(), receives an argument and returns the price
As you can see I have divided the label update functions vs the actual functions that actually retrieve the info from a server. So the first function is responsible for calling another function to retrieve the information, update the label, and then reschedule itself again using the after() method of each label widget.
There are like 5 functions like this that need to update several labels on the app, connecting to different sources and keeping the information up to date. All of them are scheduled using after() and run on the same intervals (1 second).
Obviously, due to not using any threading, the app freezes a lot when information is being requested due to them being blocking in nature.
So I need to implement threading, or any form of concurrency. And I am unable to find any good tutorials on this, or at least that fits my needs for an app that fetches information from sources on a regular basis.
I am still grasping the concepts of threading and concurrency in general, and maybe there are other ways such as asynchronism or other methods of concurrency that I don't know yet and might be better suited. But Threading seems to be the one that seems to be mostly used with Tkinter.
I assume each of these request functions would need a thread. Like this:
get_formatted_price_thread = Thread(target=get_formatted_price, args=(stuff), daemon=True) # calling a thread with an argument on the function and setting daemon to true, so it closes when I close the app
So I have tried to create threads on one of them as an example and I have found a few limitations such as:
There's no way to get the returned value of the get_formatted_price() function directly. So the other way could be just letting the function in a thread to change the label value. Or wrapping the whole label update function in a thread. But as I read everywhere, Tkinter is not thread safe. Meaning that updating tkinter widgets may work fine on some operative systems but not in others.
Besides that, I seem to struggle on to how to turn the structure of this app to something that works well with threading or any kind of concurrency. As I need to have all the labels updated as soon as new info is retrieved.
My other concern is that threads are controlled by the operative system. As it is the one that decides when threads are launched, and how that could impact my apps performance when fetching data.
I have also checked queues and the Queue library, but I am not sure if this what would help me, as each price update would be put into the queue by the thread, and retrieved by the label widget. But the information could be outdated as the queue gets the first element of the queue.
So my question here is what would I need to change here to achieve what I need. And if threading is what I need to go on, or if maybe I would need to try another approach.
Any example source code of apps that do what I need to would be very appreciated. After all, retrieving information, and keeping widgets up to date with that information should be like a pretty common use case.
Another approach I have thought of is creating a data structure, such as a Python dictionary, or an object. Each server fetching function would run in a thread in an endless loop as a daemon, and would write to the dictionary. Then the label widget update functions, since they are scheduled, would read the data on the dictionary and update the labels accordingly. But I think this approach might be messy, and probably there would be a delay on updating the labels vs the information on the dictionaries, unless a smaller after() scheduler timer is set. Or maybe all solutions are messy by default
Thank you.
I would solve this by creating a data structure, creating a function that can update the display based on the current values in the data structure, and then binding to an event that calls this function. Then, create a thread that updates this data structure and emits the event when the data changes.
Here's a contrived example that calls a web service once a second and updates a simple data structure with the time and timezone information. Whenever the data changes it emits a <<Tick>> event that triggers an update of the display.
I'm not an expert on writing threaded tkinter code, and it's my understanding that except in a very few circumstances it is unsafe to run any tkinter code in a thread other than the one where the widgets were created. One exception is that it's safe for additional threads to generate events, since the events themselves get handled in the main GUI thread. I'm guessing it's also safe to call the winfo_exists function since it doesn't modify any internal data structures.
This example kills itself after 10 seconds so as to not hammer the server for too long.
import requests
import tkinter as tk
from tkinter.font import Font
from threading import Thread
import time
class ThreadedClock(tk.Frame):
data = {"time": "", "tz": ""}
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
self.time_label = tk.Label(self, width=12, font=Font(size=32))
self.tz_label = tk.Label(self, text="GMT")
self.time_label.pack(side="top", fill="x")
self.tz_label.pack(side="top", fill="x")
# call the refresh function on every <<Tick>> event
self.bind("<<Tick>>", self.refresh)
# start a thread to update the data and generate <<Tick>> events
self.thread = Thread(target=self.get_data, daemon=True)
self.running = True
self.thread.start()
def get_data(self):
while self.winfo_exists():
now = time.time()
response = requests.get(
"https://timeapi.io/api/Time/current/zone?timeZone=GMT"
)
t = response.json()
timestr = f"{t['hour']:02}:{t['minute']:02}:{t['seconds']:02}"
self.data = {"time": timestr, "tz": t["timeZone"]}
self.event_generate("<<Tick>>")
delta = time.time() - now
time.sleep(delta)
def refresh(self, event=None):
self.time_label.configure(text=self.data["time"])
self.tz_label.configure(text=f"timezone: {self.data['tz']}")
if __name__ == "__main__":
root = tk.Tk()
root.after(10000, root.destroy)
clock = ThreadedClock(root)
clock.pack(fill="both", expand=True)
root.mainloop()
I developed a simple Python application doing some stuff, then I decided to add a simple GUI using Tkinter.
The problem is that, while the main function is doing its stuff, the window freezes.
I know it's a common problem and I've already read that I should use multithreads (very complicated, because the function updates the GUI too) or divide my code in different function, each one working for a little time.
Anyway I don't want to change my code for such a stupid application.
My question is: is it possible there's no easy way to update my Tkinter window every second? I just want to apply the KISS rule!
I'll give you a pseudo code example below that I tried but didn't work:
class Gui:
[...]#costructor and other stuff
def refresh(self):
self.root.update()
self.root.after(1000,self.refresh)
def start(self):
self.refresh()
doingALotOfStuff()
#outside
GUI = Gui(Tk())
GUI.mainloop()
It simply will execute refresh only once, and I cannot understand why.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Tkinter is in a mainloop. Which basically means it's constantly refreshing the window, waiting for buttons to be clicked, words to be typed, running callbacks, etc. When you run some code on the same thread that mainloop is on, then nothing else is going to perform on the mainloop until that section of code is done. A very simple workaround is spawning a long running process onto a separate thread. This will still be able to communicate with Tkinter and update it's GUI (for the most part).
Here's a simple example that doesn't drastically modify your psuedo code:
import threading
class Gui:
[...]#costructor and other stuff
def refresh(self):
self.root.update()
self.root.after(1000,self.refresh)
def start(self):
self.refresh()
threading.Thread(target=doingALotOfStuff).start()
#outside
GUI = Gui(Tk())
GUI.mainloop()
This answer goes into some detail on mainloop and how it blocks your code.
Here's another approach that goes over starting the GUI on it's own thread and then running different code after.
'Not responding' problem can be avoided using Multithreading in python using the thread module.
If you've defined any function, say combine() due to which the Tkinter window is freezing, then make another function to start combine() in background as shown below:
import threading
def combine():
...
def start_combine_in_bg():
threading.Thread(target=combine).start()
Now instead of calling combine(), you have to call start_combine_in_bg()
I did this and now my window is not freezing so I shared it here. Remember you can run only one thread at a time.
Have a look for reference: stackoverflow - avoid freezing of tkinter window using one line multithreading code
Here's how I managed to work around this issue (maybe it's quite dirty I don't know):
Whenever I update my tkinter window through the doingALotOfStuff() function, I call myTk.update().
It avoids freezing for me.
I am working on a very long piece of code and one which I would like to take GUI input more than once in multiple windows.
The code is too long and wouldn't make much sense if I put it in here, but here's the layout of my code:
callback1():
do something
tkinter stuff, using callback1()
...
lots of other code (none to do with tkinter)
...
callback2():
do something else
tkinter stuff using callback2()
some more code (none to do with tkinter)
mainloop()
Sorry for the vague structure, but this is more or less the layout of my code. The problem is though, that mainloop() never seems to be reached, and my other code in between the callbacks relies on the input from the GUI and so it crashes.
I've tried:
callback1():
do something
after(500, callback1)
tkinter stuff, using callback1()
...
lots of other code (none to do with tkinter)
...
callback2():
do something else
after(500, callback1)
tkinter stuff using callback2()
some more code (none to do with tkinter)
after(0, callback1)
after(0, callback2)
mainloop()
But had no luck. Can anyone help me with the correct usage of after() (or any other function) so that I can just get the GUI to display?
GUI frameworks like tkinter are event-driven. They start running when they start their mainloop(). Everything before that is basically set-up and housekeeping.
After the mainloop starts, the only pieces of your code that they run are callbacks that you've attached to interface elements like buttons or to timers with after.
These callbacks must be relatively short and should not take a long time. The GUI toolkit calls the function you provided to handle an event in the mainloop. So while your callback is running, no further events are being processed and the GUI is effectively frozen. If that only takes a little while (say 50 milliseconds) nobody will notice.
But if you want to run a computation that takes several seconds to complete, you cannot do that in a callback without freezing the GUI.
You could consider doing the long-running job in a second thread. But in CPython only one thread at a time can be executing Python bytecode for technical reasons. However (especially in Python 3) threads are forced to relinquish the CPU regularly, so this might be a workable solution.
Another solution is to farm long-running jobs out to a separate process using multiprocessing. In this case you do have to set-up communication between the processes via e.g. a Queue.
You can't organize your code like that. Presumably, you have something similar to this:
import tkinter as tk
mainwindow = tk.Tk()
mainwindow.geometry("300x200")
mainwindow.title("MyWindow")
label = tk.Label(mainwindow, text="Enter stuff, then click the button.")
label.pack()
var = tk.StringVar()
entry = tk.Entry(mainwindow, textvariable=var)
entry.pack()
#callback1():
def onclick():
#do something with var.get() ?
pass
button = tk.Button(mainwindow, text="click me", command=onclick)
button.pack()
#lots of other code (none to do with tkinter):
print("The value I need is: {}".format(var.get()))
mainwindow.mainloop()
The output of that program is:
The value I need is:
You need to put your code in either the callback function, or another function that is called by the callback function:
def my_func():
print("The value I need: {}".format(var.get()))
def onclick():
#do something with var.get()
my_func()
button = tk.Button(mainwindow, text="click me", command=onclick)
Now, the output is something like:
The value I need is: 10
tkinter is a GUI framework, and it responds to events that happen in your window. The way you respond to an event is to wrap your code in a callback function and pass the function to tkinter, which will then call the function at the proper time. You do not write arbitrary code in the middle of a tkinter program.
The after() method does not seem appropriate, because it essentially says:
After the mainloop starts, execute this function.
You can delay the execution for however many seconds you want--but that doesn't mean that the user will have entered the data you need by then. What you want to do is execute your code after the user enters their data, and usually you do that by responding to a button click, where the button says, Submit, or some other event.
I use a Tkinter window to visualize some output of my programm. The window is threaded (see basic structure below) and basically it works quite fine. So far, I only have trouble closing the window. When I clicke the "X" button for closing the window it works.
However, when I call the Monitor.close() method from the main programm that starts the monitor thread, the window just freezes (e.g., it doesn't react on clicking the "X" button) and the thread monitor keeps running. Thus, the main program does not exit.
So, at the moment, I also have to close first the window "manually" by clicking the closing button and then the main program. Not a big issue, but it would be great, if the main program could close the window by itself. Any hints?
Thanks and best regards,
Christian
class Monitor(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self):
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.start()
def close(self):
self.root.quit()
self.root.destroy()
def run(self):
self.root=Tkinter.Tk()
self.root.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", self.close)
self.root.mainloop()
Python Threading and Tk(inter) used in this way do not mix well, as they violate the Tcl/Tk threading model of using Tk just from one thread.
It works great with message passing though, just not with direct calls from a thread. So you need to add some message passing via Queue to this.
Have a look at http://effbot.org/zone/tkinter-threads.htm for an example.
I have a Python script which uses Tkinter for the GUI. My little script should create a Toplevel widget every X seconds. When I run my code, the first Toplevel widget is created successfully, but when it tries to create a second one the program crashes.
What I am doing is using the after method to call the function startCounting every 5 seconds alongside root's mainloop. Every time this function is called, I append a Toplevel widget object into a list and start a new thread which hopefully will be running the new mainloop.
I would be very grateful if someone could figure this problem out. By the way, this is just a little script that I am currently using to solve my problem, which is preventing me from going on with my real school project.
The code:
import threading,thread
from Tkinter import *
def startCounting():
global root
global topLevelList
global classInstance
topLevelList.append (Toplevel())
topLevelList[len(topLevelList)-1].title("Child")
classInstance.append(mainLoopThread(topLevelList[len(topLevelList)-1]))
root.after(5000,startCounting)
class mainLoopThread(threading.Thread):
def __init__(self,toplevelW):
self.toplevelW = toplevelW
threading.Thread.__init__(self)
self.start()
def run(self):
self.toplevelW.mainloop()
global classInstance
classInstance = []
global topLevelList
topLevelList = []
global root
root = Tk()
root.title("Main")
startCounting()
root.mainloop()
Tkinter is designed to run from the main thread, only. See the docs:
Just run all UI code in the main
thread, and let the writers write to a
Queue object; e.g.
...and a substantial example follows, showing secondary threads writing requests to a queue, and the main loop being exclusively responsible for all direct interactions with Tk.
Many objects and subsystems don't like receiving requests from multiple various threads, and in the case of GUI toolkit it's not rare to need specfically to use the main thread only.
The right Python architecture for this issue is always to devote a thread (the main one, if one must) to serving the finicky object or subsystem; every other thread requiring interaction with said subsystem or object must them obtain it by queueing requests to the dedicated thread (and possibly waiting on a "return queue" for results, if results are required as a consequence of some request). This is also a very sound Python architecture for general-purpose threading (and I expound on it at length in "Python in a Nutshell", but that's another subject;-).
Tkinter has issues dealing with input from multiple threads, I use mtTkinter instead, you won't need to change any code and everything will work fine. Just import mtTkinter instead of Tkinter.
You can get it here:
http://tkinter.unpythonic.net/wiki/mtTkinter
Is there a reason you want (or think you need) one event loop per toplevel window? A single event loop is able to handle dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of toplevel windows. And, as has been pointed out in another answer, you can't run this event loop in a separate thread.
So, to fix your code you need to only use a single event loop, and have that run in the main thread.