Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By : Alan D. Moore
Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By: Alan D. Moore

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a lightweight, portable, and easy-to-use graphical toolkit available in the Python Standard Library, widely used to build Python GUIs due to its simplicity and availability. This book teaches you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly using the powerful combination of Python and Tkinter. After being introduced to Tkinter, you will be guided step-by-step through the application development process. Over the course of the book, your application will evolve from a simple data-entry form to a complex data management and visualization tool while maintaining a clean and robust design. In addition to building the GUI, you'll learn how to connect to external databases and network resources, test your code to avoid errors, and maximize performance using asynchronous programming. You'll make the most of Tkinter's cross-platform availability by learning how to maintain compatibility, mimic platform-native look and feel, and build executables for deployment across popular computing platforms. By the end of this book, you will have the skills and confidence to design and build powerful high-end GUI applications to solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

HTTP using urllib


Every time you open a website in your browser, you're using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. HTTP was created over 25 years ago as a way for web browsers to download HTML documents, but has evolved into one of the most popular client-server communication protocols for any number of purposes. Not only can we use it to move everything from plain text to streaming video across the Internet, but applications can also use it to transfer data, initiate remote procedures, or distribute computing tasks.

A basic HTTP transaction includes a client and a server, which function as follows:

  • Client: The client creates a request. The request specifies an operation called a method. The most common methods are GET, for retrieving data, and POST, for submitting data. The request has a URL, which specifies the host, port, and path to which the request is being made, and headers which include metadata like the data-type or authorization tokens.  Finally, it has a payload, which may...