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.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Free Chapter

Meet Tkinter

Technical requirements

Project overview

Getting started

GUI programming – the big picture

The root window – your drawing board

Widgets – the building blocks of GUI programs

The Tkinter geometry manager

Events and callbacks – adding life to programs

Handling widget-specific variables

Event unbinding and virtual events

Doing it in style

Some common root window options

Getting interactive help

Further reading

Making a Text Editor

Making a Text Editor

Project overview

Getting started – setting up the editor skeleton

Adding a menu and menu items

Implementing the View menu

Adding a built-in functionality

Indexing and tagging

Implementing the Select All feature

Implementing the Find Text feature

Types of Toplevel window

Working with forms and dialogs

Working with message boxes

The icons toolbar and View menu functions

Displaying line numbers

Adding the cursor information bar

Creating a context/pop-up menu

Further reading

Programmable Drum Machine

Programmable Drum Machine

Getting started

Technical requirements

Setting up the GUI in OOP

Finalizing the data structure

Creating broader visual elements

Defining getter and setter methods

The number of units and beats per unit features

Loading drum samples

Playing the drum machine

Tkinter and threading

Support for multiple beat patterns

Saving beat patterns

Working with ttk-themed widgets

Further reading

Game of Chess

An overview of the chapter

Module requirements for this chapter

Structuring our program

Modeling the data structure

Creating a Piece class

Making the game functional

Managing user preferences

Further reading

Building an Audio Player

Building an Audio Player

An overview of the chapter

External library requirements

Program structure and broadview skeleton

Deciding the data structure

Creating the Player class

Adding and removing items from a playlist

Playing audio and adding audio controls

Creating a seek bar

One-time updates during audio playback

Managing continuous updates

Looping over tracks

Adding a tooltip

Further reading

Paint Application

Paint Application

Overview of the application

Creating a tiny framework

Setting up a broad GUI structure

Dealing with mouse events

Adding toolbar buttons

Drawing items on the canvas

Adding a color palette

Adding top bar options for draw methods

Drawing irregular lines and super shapes

Adding functionality to the remaining buttons

Adding functionality to menu items

Further reading

Piano Tutor

Technical requirements

A brief primer on piano terms

Building the broad GUI structure

Making the piano keyboard

Building the scales tutor

Building the chord finder section

Building the chord progression tutor

Building the score maker

A note on window responsiveness

Further reading

Fun with Canvas

Fun with Canvas

Building a screen saver

Graphing with Tkinter

Gravity simulation

Drawing fractals

Voronoi diagrams

Spring pendulum simulation

Chaos game – building triangles out of randomness

3D graphics with Tkinter

Further reading

Multiple Fun Projects

Multiple Fun Projects

Technical requirements

Building a Snake game

Creating a Weather Reporter application

A simple socket demo

Building a port scanner

Building a chat application

Creating a phone book application

Using asyncio with Tkinter

Interfacing with hardware/serial communication

Further reading

Miscellaneous Tips

Miscellaneous Tips

Tracing Tkinter variables

Widget traversal

Validating user input

Formatting widget data

Redirecting the command-line output to Tkinter

The class hierarchy of Tkinter

Tips for program design

Handling cross-platform differences

Tips for program optimization

Distributing a Tkinter application

The limitations of Tkinter

Alternatives to Tkinter

Tkinter in Python 2.x

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Types of Toplevel window

Previously in this chapter, we used the following line of code:

search_toplevel.transient(root)

Let's explore what it means here. Tkinter supports the following four types of Toplevel window:

The main Toplevel window: This is the type we have been constructing so far.
The child Toplevel window: This type is independent of the root. The Toplevel child behaves independently of its root, but it gets destroyed if its parent is destroyed.
The transient Toplevel window: This always appears at the top of its parent, but it does not entirely grab the focus. Clicking again on the parent window allows you to interact with it. The transient window is hidden when the parent is minimized, and it is destroyed if the parent is destroyed. Compare this to what is called a modal window. A modal window grabs all the focus from the parent window and asks a user to first...