Book Image

Tkinter GUI Application Development Blueprints - Second Edition

By : Bhaskar Chaudhary
Book Image

Tkinter GUI Application Development Blueprints - Second Edition

By: Bhaskar Chaudhary

Overview of this book

Tkinter is the built-in GUI package that comes with standard Python distributions. It is a cross-platform package, which means you build once and deploy everywhere. It is simple to use and intuitive in nature, making it suitable for programmers and non-programmers alike. This book will help you master the art of GUI programming. It delivers the bigger picture of GUI programming by building real-world, productive, and fun applications such as a text editor, drum machine, game of chess, audio player, drawing application, piano tutor, chat application, screen saver, port scanner, and much more. In every project, you will build on the skills acquired in the previous project and gain more expertise. You will learn to write multithreaded programs, network programs, database-driven programs, asyncio based programming and more. You will also get to know the modern best practices involved in writing GUI apps. With its rich source of sample code, you can build upon the knowledge gained with this book and use it in your own projects in the discipline of your choice.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Getting interactive help

This section applies not only for Tkinter, but also for any Python object for which you may need help.

Let's say that you need a reference to the Tkinter pack geometry manager. You can get interactive help in your Python interactive shell by using the help command, as shown in the following command lines:

>>> import tkinter
>>> help(tkinter.Pack)

This provides detailed help documentation of all the methods defined under the Pack class in Tkinter.

You can similarly receive help for all the other individual widgets. For instance, you can check the comprehensive and authoritative help documentation for the Label widget in the interactive shell by typing the following command:

 >>>help(tkinter.Label)

This provides a list of the following:

  • All the methods defined in the Label class
  • All the standard and widget-specific options for the Label widget
  • All the methods inherited from other classes

Finally, when in doubt regarding a method, look into the source code of Tkinter, which is located at <location-of-python-installation>\lib\. For instance, the Tkinter source code is located in the /usr/lib/python3.6.3/tkinter directory on my Linux Mint operating system. You might also find it useful to look at the source code implementation of various other modules, such as the color chooser, file dialogs, and ttk modules, and the other modules located in the aforementioned directory.