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

Validating user input


At first glance, Tkinter's selection of the input widgets seems a little disappointing. It doesn't give us a true number entry that only allows digits, nor a true drop-down selector that only allows items from the drop-down list to be selected. We have no date inputs, email inputs, or other specially-formatted input widgets.

But these weaknesses can become strengths. Because these widgets assume nothing, we can make them behave in a way that's appropriate to our specific needs, rather than some generic way that may or may not work optimally. For example, letters may seem inappropriate in a number entry, but are they? In Python, strings such as NaN and Infinity are valid float values; having a box that could increment numerals but also handle those string values may be very useful in some applications.

We're going to learn how to shape our widgets to our needs, but before we learn how to control this behavior, let's think about what we want to do.

Strategies to prevent...