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getting event late in tkinter listbox [duplicate]

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Python tkinter listbox bind on <Button-1> only works on second click
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Closed 1 year ago.
I was creating simple listbox containing numbers from 0 to 9. I wanted to print number when it get clicked so i bind list box with Button-1. Im facing problem that is when ever i select any number and try to get its location using list_box.curselection() it does not print any thing(return empty tuple), if i click on on any other number then it print previous selected number. I want to get current selected number.
from tkinter import *
root = Tk()
root.title("test listbox")
list_box = Listbox(root)
list_box.pack()
for i in range(0,10):
list_box.insert("end",i)
def def_fun(event):
print(list_box.curselection())
list_box.bind("<Button-1>",def_fun)
root.mainloop()

You don't have to bind to <Button-1> or anything, there is a virtual event with Listbox that you can use here:
def def_fun(event):
print(event.widget.curselection()) # The widget that triggers the event is event.widget
list_box.bind("<<ListboxSelect>>",def_fun) # Gets triggered each time something is selected
Just in case you are wondering why the Button-1 did not work, it is because there is a delay, the delay might be due to binding order, you can read more about it here but here is a gist:
In the default case, your binding on <Key> happens before the class binding, and it is the class binding where the text is actually inserted into the widget. That is why your binding always seems to be one character behind.

Change the binding to releasing mouse button, this will also be more user friendly (for example if they accidentally clicked on a selection they didn't want to select, they can move their mouse to a one they want and only releasing will call the function):
from tkinter import Tk, Listbox
def def_fun(event=None):
print(list_box.curselection())
root = Tk()
root.title("test listbox")
list_box = Listbox(root)
list_box.pack()
for i in range(0, 10):
list_box.insert("end", i)
list_box.bind("<ButtonRelease-1>", def_fun)
root.mainloop()
Another option if you want to call the function on select is either use #CoolCloud answer or you can also set a delay like this (although it will most certainly work in 99.9% of cases, there might be a case where it doesn't):
list_box.bind("<Button-1>", lambda e: root.after(10, def_fun))
The reason is that .curselection() gets the current selection but Button-1 is triggered before anything gets selected so it will print the previous selection because that is what was selected before and where the current selection is now, and then immediately after this, it will move the current selection to the item you clicked.
Important (because it may cause hard-to-debug issues):
I strongly advise against using wildcard (*) when importing something, You should either import what You need, e.g. from module import Class1, func_1, var_2 and so on or import the whole module: import module then You can also use an alias: import module as md or sth like that, the point is that don't import everything unless You actually know what You are doing; name clashes are the issue.
Also:
I strongly suggest following PEP 8 - Style Guide for Python Code. Function and variable names should be in snake_case, class names in CapitalCase. Don't have space around = if it is used as a part of keyword argument (func(arg='value')) but use if it is used for assigning a value (variable = 'some value'). Have two blank lines around function and class declarations.

Python tkinter key-binding to all subsequent widgets

I want to bind to events (one for Ctrl+Z and one for Ctrl+Y) to a python tkinter form that is very complex (the root has many child frames and those also have, so binding the event to each of those would be very annoying and redundant). I hoped there was a method to bind the key to the root so that even when my focus is inside on of the child widgets the binding will trigger. What I tried so far is this:
def _init_gui(self, root):
""" Initializes all members of the gui"""
tkinter.Frame.__init__(self, root) #Superclass init
self.root = root
width, height = root.winfo_screenwidth(), root.winfo_screenheight()
#Most of the code is left out because it is not neccessary
self.root.bind_all("Control-z", lambda _: self.undo())
self.root.bind_all("Control-y", lambda _: self.redo())
However this does not seem to work. Is there any proper solution to this? (I also tried the bind-Method with the same lack of result)

You aren't properly specifying the event. The proper event names are "<Control-z>" and "<Control-y>" (take note of the < and >).
Other than that, bind_all is exactly what you want.
There's also no need to use lambda. It's only useful in one specific situation, and this isn't it. Just provide a reference to a function that accepts an argument for the event object that tkinter automatically passes to the callback. If you also want to call the function directly, give the event parameter a null default.
For example:
def undo(self, event=None):
...
def redo(self, event=None):
...
self.root.bind_all("<Control-y>", self.undo)
self.root.bind_all("<Control-z>", self.redo)

Readonly tkinter text widget

I want to use tkinter text widget as a readonly widget. It should act as a transcript area. My idea is to keep this transcript in a file and whenever the user writes anything, just remove all the contents of the widget, and rewrite it again.
The code will look like:
transcript_entry = SimpleEditor() # SimpleEditor is inherited from ScrolledText
transcript_entry.text.delete("1.0", END)
# this is just a test string, it should be the contents of the transcript file
transcript_entry.text.insert("1.0", "This is test transcript")
transcript_entry.text.bind("<KeyPress>", transcript_entry.readonly)
And readonly function will look like:
def readonly(self, event):
self.text.delete("1.0", END)
# this is just a test string, it should be the contents of the transcript file
self.text.insert("1.0", "This is test transcript")
The bug here is that the last character entered by the user is added to the transcript. I suspect the reason is that the readonly function is called, then the user input is wrote to the widget. How to reverse this order & let the readonly function be called after the user input is wrote to the widget?
Any hints?

The reason that the last character is inserted is because the default bindings (which causes the insert) happens after custom bindings you put on the widget. So your bindings fire first and then the default binding inserts the characters. There are other questions and answers here that discuss this in more depth. For example, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/11542200/
However, there is a better way to accomplish what you are trying to do. If you want to create a readonly text widget, you can set the state attribute to "disabled". This will prevent all inserts and deletes (and means you need to revert the state whenever you want to programmatically enter data).
On some platforms it will seem like you can't highlight and copy text, but that is only because the widget won't by default get focus on a mouse click. By adding a binding to set the focus, the user can highlight and copy text but they won't be able to cut or insert.
Here's an example using python 2.x; for 3.x you just have to change the imports:
import Tkinter as tk
from ScrolledText import ScrolledText
class Example(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, parent):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, parent)
t = ScrolledText(self, wrap="word")
t.insert("end", "Hello\nworld")
t.configure(state="disabled")
t.pack(side="top", fill="both", expand=True)
# make sure the widget gets focus when clicked
# on, to enable highlighting and copying to the
# clipboard.
t.bind("<1>", lambda event: t.focus_set())
if __name__ == "__main__":
root = tk.Tk()
Example(root).pack(fill="both", expand=True)
root.mainloop()

Please do not delete and reinsert your text :
It is huge performance issue.
It will remove any tags and marks set on the text
This will be visible to the user, and users don't like flickering interfaces
This is not necessary, Tkinter is customizable enough to just not allow the user change the content.
The best way I found to create a read only Text is to disable all the bindings leading to a text change.
My solution is to create a new Widget binding map containing only "read only commands". Then, just reconfigure your widget to use the new RO binding map instead of the default one :
from Tkinter import *
# This is the list of all default command in the "Text" tag that modify the text
commandsToRemove = (
"<Control-Key-h>",
"<Meta-Key-Delete>",
"<Meta-Key-BackSpace>",
"<Meta-Key-d>",
"<Meta-Key-b>",
"<<Redo>>",
"<<Undo>>",
"<Control-Key-t>",
"<Control-Key-o>",
"<Control-Key-k>",
"<Control-Key-d>",
"<Key>",
"<Key-Insert>",
"<<PasteSelection>>",
"<<Clear>>",
"<<Paste>>",
"<<Cut>>",
"<Key-BackSpace>",
"<Key-Delete>",
"<Key-Return>",
"<Control-Key-i>",
"<Key-Tab>",
"<Shift-Key-Tab>"
)
class ROText(Text):
tagInit = False
def init_tag(self):
"""
Just go through all binding for the Text widget.
If the command is allowed, recopy it in the ROText binding table.
"""
for key in self.bind_class("Text"):
if key not in commandsToRemove:
command = self.bind_class("Text", key)
self.bind_class("ROText", key, command)
ROText.tagInit = True
def __init__(self, *args, **kwords):
Text.__init__(self, *args, **kwords)
if not ROText.tagInit:
self.init_tag()
# Create a new binding table list, replace the default Text binding table by the ROText one
bindTags = tuple(tag if tag!="Text" else "ROText" for tag in self.bindtags())
self.bindtags(bindTags)
text = ROText()
text.insert("1.0", """A long text with several
lines
in it""")
text.pack()
text.mainloop()
Note that just the bindings are changed. All the Text command (as insert, delete, ...) are still usable.

I recently worked a different, slightly simpler solution. Rather than changing all the bindings, one can add a function to delete all input characters as soon as they are written:
def read_only(self, event):
if event.char is not '': # delete only if the key pressed
# corresponds to an actual character
self.text.delete('insert-1c')
and just bind it to any event:
root.bind('<Key>', self.read_only)

Tkinter, Entry widget, is detecting input text possible?

I have an Entry widget on a simple calculator. The user can choose to enter an equation via the keypad. I was wondering if there was a way to detect a character(from the keypad in my case) being typed into the Entry widget. So, focus is on the widget, user presses '4', it comes up on the widget... can I detect this act, for basic purposes of logging the input?

Every time you press a key inside a Tkinter window, a Tkinter.Event instance is created. All you need to do is access that instance. Here is a simple script that demonstrates just how:
from Tkinter import Tk, Entry
root = Tk()
def click(key):
# print the key that was pressed
print key.char
entry = Entry()
entry.grid()
# Bind entry to any keypress
entry.bind("<Key>", click)
root.mainloop()
key (being a Tkinter.Event instance) contains many different attributes that can be used to get almost any type of data you want on the key that was pressed. I chose to use the .char attribute here, which will have the script print what each keypress is.

Yes. There are a few different ways to do this, in fact.
You can create a StringVar, attach it to the Entry, and trace it for changes; you can bind all of the relevant events; or you can add a validation command that fires at any of several different points in the sequence. They all do slightly different things.
When a user types 4, there's a key event with just the 4 in it (which doesn't let you distinguish whether the user was adding 4 to the end, or in the middle, or replacing a whole selected word, or…), and then a modification event is fired with the old text,* and then the "key" or "all" validation function is called with the (proposed) new text, and the variable is updated with the (accepted) new text (unless the validation function returned false, in which case the invalidcommand is called instead).
I don't know which one of those you want, so let's show all of them, and you can play around with them and pick the one you want.
import Tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
def validate(newtext):
print('validate: {}'.format(newtext))
return True
vcmd = root.register(validate)
def key(event):
print('key: {}'.format(event.char))
def var(*args):
print('var: {} (args {})'.format(svar.get(), args))
svar = tk.StringVar()
svar.trace('w', var)
entry = tk.Entry(root,
textvariable=svar,
validate="key", validatecommand=(vcmd, '%P'))
entry.bind('<Key>', key)
entry.pack()
root.mainloop()
The syntax for variable trace callbacks is a bit complicated, and not that well documented in Tkinter; if you want to know what the first two arguments mean, you need to read the Tcl/Tk docs, and understand how Tkinter maps your particular StringVar to the Tcl name 'PY_VAR0'… Really, it's a lot easier to just build a separate function for each variable and mode you want to trace, and ignore the args.
The syntax for validation functions is even more complicated, and a lot more flexible than I've shown. For example, you can get the inserted text (which can be more than one character, in case of a paste operation), its position, and all kinds of other things… but none of this is described anywhere in the Tkinter docs, so you will need to go the Tcl/Tk docs. The most common thing you want is the proposed new text as the argument, and for that, use (vcmd, '%P').
Anyway, you should definitely play with doing a variety of different things and see what each mechanism gives you. Move the cursor around or select part of the string before typing, paste with the keyboard and with the mouse, drag and drop the selection, hit a variety of special keys, etc.
* I'm going to ignore this step, because it's different in different versions of Tk, and not very useful anyway. In cases where you really need a modified event, it's probably better to use a Text widget and bind <<Modified>>.

If you just need to do simple things without using trace module you can try
def objchangetext(self, textwidget):
print(textwidget.get()) #print text out to terminal
text1 = tk.Entry(tk.Tk())
text1.bind("<KeyRelease>", lambda event, arg=(0): objchangetext(text1))

Tkinter: set StringVar after <Key> event, including the key pressed

Every time a character is entered into a Text widget, I want to get the contents of that widget and subtract its length from a certain number (basically a "you have x characters left" deal).
But the StringVar() is always one event behind. This is, from what I gather, because the event is processed before the character is entered into the Text widget. This means that if I have 3 characters in the field and I enter a 4th, the StringVar is updated but is still 3 characters long, then it updates to 4 when I enter a 5th character.
Is there a way to keep the two in line?
Here's some code. I removed irrelevant parts.
def __init__(self, master):
self.char_count = StringVar()
self.char_count.set("140 chars left")
self.post_tweet = Text(self.master)
self.post_tweet.bind("<Key>", self.count)
self.post_tweet.grid(...)
self.char_count = Label(self.master, textvariable=self.foo)
self.char_count.grid(...)
def count(self):
self.x = len(self.post_tweet.get(1.0, END))
self.char_count.set(str(140 - self.x))

A simple solution is to add a new bindtag after the class binding. That way the class binding will fire before your binding. See this answer to the question How to bind self events in Tkinter Text widget after it will binded by Text widget? for an example. That answer uses an entry widget rather than a text widget, but the concept of bindtags is identical between those two widgets. Just be sure to use Text rather than Entry where appropriate.
Another solution is to bind on KeyRelease, since the default bindings happen on KeyPress.
Here's an example showing how to do it with bindtags:
import Tkinter as tk
class Example(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.post_tweet = tk.Text(self)
bindtags = list(self.post_tweet.bindtags())
bindtags.insert(2, "custom") # index 1 is where most default bindings live
self.post_tweet.bindtags(tuple(bindtags))
self.post_tweet.bind_class("custom", "<Key>", self.count)
self.post_tweet.grid()
self.char_count = tk.Label(self)
self.char_count.grid()
def count(self, event):
current = len(self.post_tweet.get("1.0", "end-1c"))
remaining = 140-current
self.char_count.configure(text="%s characters remaining" % remaining)
if __name__ == "__main__":
root = tk.Tk()
Example(root).pack(side="top", fill="both", expand=True)
root.mainloop()

Like most events in Tk, your <Key> handler is fired before the event is processed by the built-in bindings, rather than after. This allows you to, for example, prevent the normal processing from happening, or change what it does.
But this means that you can't access the new value (whether via a StringVar, or just by calling entry.get()), because it hasn't been updated yet.
If you're using Text, there's a virtual event <<Modified>> that gets fired after the "modified" flag changes. Assuming you weren't using that flag for another purpose (e.g., in a text editor, you might want to use it to mean "enable the Save button"), you can use it to do exactly what you want:
def count(self, event=None):
if not self.post_tweet.edit_modified():
return
self.post_tweet.edit_modified(False)
self.x = len(self.post_tweet.get(1.0, END))
self.char_count.set(str(140 - self.x))
# ...
self.post_tweet.bind("<<Modified>>", self.count)
Usually, when you want something like this, you want an Entry rather than a Text. Which provides a much nicer way to do this: validation. As with everything beyond the basics in Tkinter, there's no way you're going to figure this out without reading the Tcl/Tk docs (which is why the Tkinter docs link to them). And really, even the Tk docs don't describe validation very well. But here's how it works:
def count(self, new_text):
self.x = len(new_text)
self.char_count.set(str(140 - self.x))
return True
# ...
self.vcmd = self.master.register(self.count)
self.post_tweet = Edit(self.master, validate='key',
validatecommand=(self.vcmd, '%P'))
The validatecommand can take a list of 0 or more arguments to pass to the function. The %P argument gets the new value the entry will have if you allow it. See VALIDATION in the Entry manpage for more details.
If you want the entry to be rejected (e.g., if you want to actually block someone from entering more than 140 characters), just return False instead of True.
By the way, it's worth looking over the Tk wiki and searching for Tkinter recipes on ActiveState. It's a good bet someone's got wrappers around Text and Entry that hide all the extra stuff you have to do to make these solutions (or others) work so you just have to write the appropriate count method. There might even be a Text wrapper that adds Entry-style validation.
There are a few other ways you could do this, but they all have downsides.
Add a trace to hook all writes to a StringVar attached to your widget. This will get fired by any writes to the variable. I guarantee that you will get the infinite-recursive-loop problem the first time you try to use it for validation, and then you'll run into other more subtle problems in the future. The usual solution is to create a sentinel flag, which you check every time you come into the handler to make sure you're not doing it recursively, and then set while you're doing anything that can trigger a recursive event. (That wasn't necessary for the edit_modified example above because we could just ignore anyone setting the flag to False, and we only set it to False, so there's no danger of infinite recursion.)
You can get the new char (or multi-char string) out of the <Key> virtual event. But then, what do you do with it? You need to know where it's going to be added, which character(s) it's going to be overwriting, etc. If you don't do all the work to simulate Entry—or, worse, Text—editing yourself, this is no better than just doing len(entry.get()) + 1.