How to hard quit a Tkinter program - python

My Python program consists of two parts, one gets user credentials through an Tkinter and passes it to the other script which then processes them.
It works fine but the only problem is that although my GUI passes data and then the processing script starts its work, The GUI starts not-responding and causes havoc as it freezes until the download completes (which could potentially take hours)
I create an object of the Interface class in the processing script by importing the GUI script
root = Tk.Tk()
root.title('Coursera-dl')
root.geometry("345x100")
app = GUI.Interface(root)
app.mainloop()
This is my GUI script's destruct method defined in a Class which is executed automatically after the data has been received by the processing script: However when the user clicks 'OK' the GUI freezes and doesn't exit and If I force quit it, the processing script also ends as python.exe is terminated
*code*
....................................
def destruct(self):
if tkMessageBox.askokcancel(title=None,message='Download would start upon closing the Interface, If any changes are to be made to the credentials Please do so by selecting Cancel'):
self.quit()
How can I make my program so that when the user clicks on 'OK' the GUI quits safely and the processing script does its work

root.quit() just Bypasses the root.mainloop() i.e root.mainloop() will still be running in background if quit() command is executed.
Use root.destroy()
this will stop root.mainloop() itself but it wont close the python program and everything will still be ran just without the GUI

Related

Python GUI using os.system to run python script cause main GUI "Not Responding"

StackOverflow community.
I am writing a python GUI to monitor another program's data in OSX environment and at one point I decide to click one button to open another python script that I wrote. It does work but it also causes a lag problem of the main GUI program as soon as I click the button. For the lag problem I mean the GUI window is "Not Responding" and I need to force quit. The method I use to run the new script is,
def create_html():
os.system('python realtime.py')
My program doesn't have the multiple class structure, just the simple canvas, and framework. I wonder if this is also the problem to cause my program running slow.
The problem is you are using os.system, which is a blocking call. It will not return control to your main code until python realtime.py is done executing and returned.
You need to use a call that will not block the rest of your program, such as subprocess.Popen.
You can also see this QA for further information

Make Jython JFrame that cannot be closed

I'm writing a little script for TopSpin, a program to acquire and process NMR data. While the script is running the user should not select a different dataset in TopSpin. Therefore I wanted to open a Popup screen displaying a message.
The script we are talking about, will take some time to finish it's task, so if a user closes the popup, the message will not be visible anymore and another staff member could - unknowingly - cause some problems by selecting different datasets. That's the reason why I had the idea of implementing a popup window that cannot be closed by the user.
When the script starts it's task it will run popup.show() and after having finished it will run popup.hide(). How could I do this in Jython?
from javax.swing import *
def test():
frame = JFrame("Hello StackOverflow")
frame.setSize(300, 300)
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(None)
frame.show()
# Do some work
frame.hide()
test()

Showing dialog in non-main thread

I have a non-GUI program that sometimes needs to display a dialog to user.
The problem is that my program runs in an infinite loop and when I show a dialog in this loop the execution of program halts until the dialog is dismissed and this is not wanted because my program loop is a background service that must be responsive all time. So I tried running the dialog showing code in another thread but it doesn't work properly: The dialog is shown only one time/the first time and subsequent calls show nothing.
How can I solve this problem?
This is a sample code for you to test the situation:
import tkinter
import tkinter.messagebox
import threading
import time
def messageBox():
root=tkinter.Tk()
root.withdraw()
tkinter.messagebox.showinfo('dialog', 'test')
root.destroy()
while True:
threading.Thread(target=messageBox).start()
time.sleep(3)
I use Python 3.3.4 on Windows XP
My suggestion is to make your dialog a separate script, and use the subprocess module to display the dialog in a separate process.

Tkinter window says (not responding) but code is running

I have a program that runs a long process after you click an action button. As the process is running the root window will say that it is not responding even though I know the program is running in the background. This program is going to be released to a few people that I work with and I want to make sure they don't freak out and close the window when they see this. The solution I have is sitting a root.update in the loop of the process that is running but I am not sure this was the best fix.
Using the python 3.3
Here is a sample of the code so you get an idea of what I am doing, this is called from the main loop:
def combine(boxes_to, boxes_from, frame):
to_value,to_pos = gui.checkBoxes(boxes_to)
from_value,from_pos = gui.checkBoxes(boxes_from)
frame.destroy()
running = Label(root,text="Running please do not close..",font = (16))
running.pack()
root.update()
map_to = open("map_to",'r')
for line in map_to:
root.update()
process(line)
running.destroy()
map_to.close()
finish = Button(root, text="Done",command=gui.stop)
finish.pack()
While you can call root.update() in your loop, this will still produce some (potentially) undesirable side-effects.
The program may act laggy, meaning it takes a long time to respond to user input.
You will only be able to run this one action. Any other action has to wait for this to finish.
As an alternative I would suggest that you implement simple multi-threading. Python multithreading is pretty simple, and will prevent both of these drawbacks. You will be able to execute your long running code, while still providing a clean and responsive UI.
If your application is trivially parallelizable, you could use multiple threads to decrease running time. Ex. Thread 1 handles entries 1-100, while thread 2 handles entries 101-200.
The best you can do here is to use multithreading in Python. Here's how to do this:
Let's say you have a function named combine() due to which the window is freezing, which is being used as a command for a button named 'btn' as shown here:
btn = Button(root, text="Click Me", command=combine)
Now, when btn is pressed you might be getting the 'not responding' problem. To fix this, edit the code as shown below:
import threading
btn = Button(root, text="Click Me", command=threading.Thread(target=combine).start)
Here threading.Thread creates a separate thread in which the combine() method is executed, so the GUI can continue to keep responding while the command is being executed.

What is the difference between root.destroy() and root.quit()?

In Python using tkinter, what is the difference between root.destroy() and root.quit() when closing the root window?
Is one prefered over the other? Does one release resources that the other doesn't?
root.quit() causes mainloop to exit. The interpreter is still intact, as are all the widgets. If you call this function, you can have code that executes after the call to root.mainloop(), and that code can interact with the widgets (for example, get a value from an entry widget).
Calling root.destroy() will destroy all the widgets and exit mainloop. Any code after the call to root.mainloop() will run, but any attempt to access any widgets (for example, get a value from an entry widget) will fail because the widget no longer exists.
quit() stops the TCL interpreter. This is in most cases what you want, because your Tkinter-app will also stop. It can be a problem, if you e.g. call your app from idle. idle is itself a Tkinker-app, so if you call quit() in your app and the TCL interpreter gets terminated, idle will also terminate (or get confused ).
destroy() just terminates the mainloop and deletes all widgets. So it seems to be safer if you call your app from another Tkinter app, or if you have multiple mainloops."
taken from http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread66698.html
The tkinter.Tk "quit" method exits the "mainloop" event-handler, and "destroy" destroys all the embedded widgets and only then exits the "mainloop". So is "destroy" the better of the two? Well, sometimes not. If "destroy" fails to destroy all the widgets for some reason, then "mainloop" is never exited and Python locks up. It can be better to just let Python shut things down in an orderly manner at the end of the script.
For example, if you embed a Matplotlib plot in a Tkinter window, that is useful because Matplotlib's own widgets are somewhat clunky to use. Unfortunately, if you then try to close the window by clicking the usual "X" in the title-bar, the window closes alright but leaves Python running. If the script had been started from a terminal, you'd have to mash Ctrl-C for a couple of minutes to get the prompt back. The reason being that the window-close event is bound to "destroy" which does not destroy the Matplotlib objects but leaves them orphaned.
The fix is to bind the window-close event to "quit" instead. But... if the script is started in a Tkinter-based IDE like IDLE, then that creates a new problem in that the window does not close because IDLE holds Tkinter running. So now "destroy" must be added after the mainloop. Finally, all is well.
Below is a minimal example of a Matplotlib plot that can be inverted with a press of a Tkinter button. Its window can be closed without problems. But if the windows-close event had been bound to "destroy" instead of "quit" then a locked-up Python process would remain.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import tkinter as tk
from matplotlib.backends.backend_tkagg import FigureCanvasTkAgg
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
root = tk.Tk()
data, = plt.plot([0,5,3,4,-5,3])
canvas = FigureCanvasTkAgg(plt.gcf(), master=root)
invert = lambda: (data.set_ydata(-data.get_ydata()), canvas.draw())
tk.Button(master=root, text="Invert", command=invert).pack()
canvas.get_tk_widget().pack(fill=tk.BOTH, expand=1)
root.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", root.quit)
root.mainloop()
root.destroy()
Edit: I'll add that by binding the window-close event to both methods, you can avoid adding a line after the "mainloop", should that be desirable for some reason:
root.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", lambda: (root.quit(), root.destroy()))
My experience with root.quit() and root.destroy() ...
I have a dos python script, which calls a tkinter script (to choose from set of known values from combobox), then returns to the dos script to complete other things.
The TKinter script I've added onto the parent script. I may convert all to tkinter, but a combo works for the time being. It works in the following way:
To get rid of the windows box after selection was implemented, I needed to
1) root.quit() inside the callback function where all my keypresses were being processed.
2) root.destroy() after mainloop to destroy the windows box.
If I used root.destroy() inside the callback, I got an error message saying tkinter objects were no longer accessable.
Without the root.destroy() after mainloop, the windows box STAYED ONSCREEN until the whole parent script had completed.

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