Tkinter Toplevel window formatted Table - python

I have this method below:
def viewTable(self):
toplevel = Toplevel()
toplevel.title('Table')
Label (toplevel, text='Course').pack(side=TOP,padx=10,pady=10)
I also have a dictionary with {course: "hoursUsed hoursAllowed Comment"} and I want to print this dictionary in a formatted table in the toplevel window, like with column headers and proper spacing. How do I go about this? Thanks.
Gave this more thought and I am looking into grid instead of pack.
For those wondering: I switched all my .pack() to .grid(). It was a lot of work, but I really needed the formatting and grid works so well for that.

Related

How to prevent floating widgets in tkinter python

I have the following UI for my tkinter application. My problem is that the OptionsMenu with long text moves all other widgets to the right and eventually out of frame.
Solutions that I can think of:
1) Wrap text to next row.
2) A way that StringVar can truncate the selected text of the dropdown up until certain characters but does not change the original value (selected in dropdown) it stores.
3) Stop making them float and overlap over other widgets.
Here is the image of the erratic behavior.
Here is my code: for the Finding Category dropdown.
if finding_names != []:
finding_names.insert(0,'All')
finding_type_select.set(finding_names[0])
finding_type_dropdown = OptionMenu(tab3_project_reports,finding_type_select,*finding_names)
finding_type_dropdown.configure(font='helvetica 12')
finding_type_dropdown.grid(row=5, column=1,padx=10, pady=10,sticky=W+E+N+S)
finding_type_dropdown.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
I have also tried to use the grid_columnconfigure but I did not really see any change.
I would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.
The only thing I can see here that could be the problem (without seeing more code) is how you are using grid_columnconfig(). You can only apply a column/row config to a container. These would be the root window, a Toplevel() window or a Frame. You are currently using grid_columnconfigure() and that will work but note you can also just do columnconfigure() without the grid_ portion. Same goes for rows.
Instead of this:
finding_type_dropdown.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
Do this:
tab3_project_reports.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)

How to position a ScrolledWindow (tkinter) scrollbar at the bottom

I am creating a gui with tkinter in python. I have created a scrollbar and this is what the section of code looks like:
beta_frame = Frame(width="500", height="680")
beta_frame.pack()
holder = ScrolledWindow(beta_frame, width=500, height=680)
holder.pack()
alpha_frame = holder.window
I would like to position this scrollbar at the very bottom every time something new is put on the screen (which would obviously be added to the bottom The only things I'm adding to the screen are labels and buttons), though I'm unsure how to do this and I've searched everywhere. All I came up with is the method see, which I am unsure if it is even applicable in this instance. Any help would be appreciated.
.see() is the normal way to get Tkinter to auto-scroll to a given position, but that method only exists on the widgets that have built-in support for scrolling - Listbox, Canvas, Text, and Entry. The Tix ScrolledWindow makes an ordinary Frame scrollable, so no such method will exist.
It appears that this line of code will do what you want:
holder.tk.eval(holder.vsb['command'] + " moveto 1.0")
vsb is the vertical scrollbar component of the ScrolledWindow, 'command' is the scrollbar configuration option that specifies a callback to invoke when the position is changed. This will refer to something deep inside Tix, but we don't care exactly what it is; we just invoke it with the same parameters that the scrollbar itself would, if being moved to the very end.

Is it ok to create and place a tkinter widget at the same time?

I am new in Python and in tkinter so the question may seems naive: is it ok to create and place widgets at the same time if I don't need to change them?
It works but is it a good practice? And if not why?
An example of what I mean:
import tkinter as tk
window=tk.Tk()
tk.Label(window,text='Lost Label').pack()
window.mainloop()
To expand upon #Skynet's answer....
Whenever you do Widget(*args, **kwargs).pack() the pack() method returns None as would other geometry managers, so if you tried to assign this to a variable the variable would be None.
In this case then probably not, since you probably actually want to be storing the reference to the widget.
If you don't need a reference then there's not really a problem with it. As the other answer notes you don't need a definitve reference to every single widget in your GUI unless you plan to use this reference in some way. Unless I plan on changing the label text / modifying it in someway then I typically use your method to save some space. No need to write more code than you have to!
For example you're creating a Button widget.
btn = Button(blabla, text="Button1")
This returns a button object and if you need later to configure it or get information about it you can do it by through the btn variable.
But if you use something like btn = Button(blabla, text="Button1").pack() it returns None and not a button object so you won't be able to change anything about the button or get information about it later.
Another example is with the Entry widget
entry = Entry(blabla)
Using that later you can do entry.get() to get the text inside the entry
but you won't be able to do it if you use entry = Entry(blabla).pack() since it doesn't return an entry object, it just packs the widget and you won't be able to access it for later use.
There is nothing wrong with that approach and I have already seen it quite a few times. You don't have to keep a reference to every widget in your GUI.

Python Tkinter set widgets frame with grid()

My problem is this. I create a tkinter widget and later down the road I create a new frame that I want to add this widget to. When I call .grid() on the widget the widget is placed on the first frame, not the newer one that I want it to be on.
By default a widget is managed by its parent. If you don't want that, use the parameter in_ when calling pack, place or grid.
For example:
self.f1 = tk.Frame(...)
self.label = tk.Label(self.f1, ...)
self.label.pack(...)
...
self.f2 = tk.Frame(...)
self.label.pack(in_=self.f2, ...)
However, if you find yourself doing this a lot, you're probably doing something wrong. This is almost never necessary in most tkinter applications.

How do you create a LabelFrame with a scrollbar in Tkinter?

I'm using Python and Tkinter to create a GUI for a program I'm writing, and I'm having a couple of problems.
I have three objects descended from LabelFrame in an object descended from Frame. One of the LabelFrame descendants is two columns of corresponding Label and Entry objects.
The problem is that there are a varying number of Label and Entry pairs, and there can be more than fit on the screen. I need a way to make a scrollbar for this LabelFrame so that everything fits on the screen. I've tried various ways of making a Scrollbar object, but nothing seems to work. How can I bind a scrollbar to this frame?
Also, I need to be able to refresh or reload this LabelFrame when the load_message() method is called, but it just redisplays the new pairs on top of the old ones (so when there are less pairs in the new set, the old set is still visible at the bottom). I've tried using grid_forget() but either nothing changes or the whole frame doesn't display. How can I forget this display and then redisplay it?
Here is the code for this class:
class freq_frame(LabelFrame):
def __init__(self, master = None, text = 'Substitutions'):
LabelFrame.__init__(self, master, text = text)
self.grid()
def load_message(self):
self.frequency = get_freq(message)
self.create_widgets()
def create_widgets(self):
self.label_list = [Label(self, text = get_label(char, self.frequency[char]), justify = LEFT) for char in self.frequency.keys()]
self.entry_list = [Entry(self, width = 1) for char in self.frequency.keys()]
for n in range(len(self.label_list)):
self.label_list[n].grid(column = 0, row = n)
for n in range(len(self.entry_list)):
self.entry_list[n].grid(column = 1, row = n)
If anyone can help with either of these problems, I'd appreciate it.
Also, this question seems like it might be a little thin, but I don't know what to add. Don't hesitate to ask for more information (but be specific).
Thanks!
Labelframes don't support scrolling. So the short answer to your question is "you can't". It sounds obvious, but if the documentation for a widget doesn't say it supports scrolling, it doesn't support scrolling.
However, there is a simple solution. First, add a canvas as a child to the labelframe and pack it so that it fills the labelframe. Attach scrollbars to the canvas and add them to the labelframe too. Then embed a frame within the canvas, add your widgets to that inner frame, and then adjust the scrollregion of the canvas to match the size of the frame after you've added all the inner labels and entries.
It sounds complicated, but it's really very straight-forward.
As for re-creating the widgets when you call load_message, calling grid_forget only removes them from view, it doesn't actually destroy the widgets. Over time you could potentially end up with hundreds of non-visible widgets which is almost certainly not what you want.
Instead, you want to first destroy all the existing widgets. That's pretty easy if they all are in the same parent, since you can ask the parent for a list of all its children. Just iterate over that list to delete each child, then add any new children. An even easier solution is to destroy and recreate that inner frame that contains the labels and entries. When you delete a widget, all child widgets get automatically destroyed. So, delete that inner frame, create a new one, and add your labels and entries again.

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