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Python GUI Programming Cookbook

By : Burkhard Meier

4.4 (11)

Python GUI Programming Cookbook

4.4 (11)

By: Burkhard Meier

Overview of this book

Python is a multi-domain, interpreted programming language. It is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. It is often used as a scripting language because of its forgiving syntax and compatibility with a wide variety of different eco-systems. Its flexible syntax enables developers to write short scripts while at the same time, they can use object-oriented concepts to develop very large projects. Python GUI Programming Cookbook follows a task-based approach to help you create beautiful and very effective GUIs with the least amount of code necessary. This book uses the simplest programming style, using the fewest lines of code to create a GUI in Python, and then advances to using object-oriented programming in later chapters. If you are new to object-oriented programming (OOP), this book will teach you how to take advantage of the OOP coding style in the context of creating GUIs written in Python. Throughout the book, you will develop an entire GUI application, building recipe upon recipe, connecting the GUI to a database. In the later chapters, you will explore additional Python GUI frameworks, using best practices. You will also learn how to use threading to ensure your GUI doesn’t go unresponsive. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in Python GUI programming to develop a common set of GUI applications.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Creating the GUI Form and Adding Widgets

1. Creating the GUI Form and Adding Widgets

Introduction

Creating our first Python GUI

Preventing the GUI from being resized

Adding a label to the GUI form

Creating buttons and changing their text property

Text box widgets

Setting the focus to a widget and disabling widgets

Combo box widgets

Creating a check button with different initial states

Using radio button widgets

Using scrolled text widgets

Adding several widgets in a loop

2. Layout Management

2. Layout Management

Introduction

Arranging several labels within a label frame widget

Using padding to add space around widgets

How widgets dynamically expand the GUI

Aligning the GUI widgets by embedding frames within frames

Creating menu bars

Creating tabbed widgets

Using the grid layout manager

3. Look and Feel Customization

3. Look and Feel Customization

Introduction

Creating message boxes – information, warning, and error

How to create independent message boxes

How to create the title of a tkinter window form

Changing the icon of the main root window

Using a spin box control

Relief, sunken, and raised appearance of widgets

Creating tooltips using Python

How to use the canvas widget

4. Data and Classes

4. Data and Classes

Introduction

How to use StringVar()

How to get data from a widget

Using module-level global variables

How coding in classes can improve the GUI

Writing callback functions

Creating reusable GUI components

5. Matplotlib Charts

5. Matplotlib Charts

Introduction

Creating beautiful charts using Matplotlib

Matplotlib – downloading modules using pip

Matplotlib – downloading modules with whl extensions

Creating our first chart

Placing labels on charts

How to give the chart a legend

Scaling charts

Adjusting the scale of charts dynamically

6. Threads and Networking

6. Threads and Networking

Introduction

How to create multiple threads

Starting a thread

Stopping a thread

How to use queues

Passing queues among different modules

Using dialog widgets to copy files to your network

Using TCP/IP to communicate via networks

Using URLOpen to read data from websites

7. Storing Data in Our MySQL Database via Our GUI

7. Storing Data in Our MySQL Database via Our GUI

Introduction

Connecting to a MySQL database from Python

Configuring the MySQL connection

Designing the Python GUI database

Using the SQL INSERT command

Using the SQL UPDATE command

Using the SQL DELETE command

Storing and retrieving data from our MySQL database

8. Internationalization and Testing

8. Internationalization and Testing

Introduction

Displaying widget text in different languages

Changing the entire GUI language all at once

Localizing the GUI

Preparing the GUI for internationalization

How to design a GUI in an agile fashion

Do we need to test the GUI code?

Setting debug watches

Configuring different debug output levels

Creating self-testing code using Python's __main__ section

Creating robust GUIs using unit tests

How to write unit tests using the Eclipse PyDev IDE

9. Extending Our GUI with the wxPython Library

9. Extending Our GUI with the wxPython Library

Introduction

How to install the wxPython library

How to create our GUI in wxPython

Quickly adding controls using wxPython

Trying to embed a main wxPython app in a main tkinter app

Trying to embed our tkinter GUI code into wxPython

How to use Python to control two different GUI frameworks

How to communicate between the two connected GUIs

10. Creating Amazing 3D GUIs with PyOpenGL and PyGLet

10. Creating Amazing 3D GUIs with PyOpenGL and PyGLet

Introduction

PyOpenGL transforms our GUI

Our GUI in 3D!

Using bitmaps to make our GUI pretty

PyGLet transforms our GUI more easily than PyOpenGL

Our GUI in amazing colors

Creating a slideshow using tkinter

11. Best Practices

11. Best Practices

Introduction

Avoiding spaghetti code

Using __init__ to connect modules

Mixing fall-down and OOP coding

Using a code naming convention

When not to use OOP

How to use design patterns successfully

Avoiding complexity

Index

Index

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Preventing the GUI from being resized

Getting ready

This recipe extends the previous one. Therefore, it is necessary to have typed Recipe 1 yourself into a project of your own or downloaded the code from https://www.packtpub.com/support.

How to do it...

We are preventing the GUI from being resized.

import tkinter as tk        # 1 imports

win = tk.Tk()               # 2 Create instance
win.title("Python GUI")     # 3 Add a title       
    
win.resizable(0, 0)         # 4 Disable resizing the GUI

win.mainloop()              # 5 Start GUI

Running the code creates this GUI:

How to do it...

How it works...

Line 4 prevents the Python GUI from being resized.

Running this code will result in a GUI similar to the one we created in Recipe 1. However, the user can no longer resize it. Also, notice how the maximize button in the toolbar of the window is grayed out.

Why is this important? Because, once we add widgets to our form, resizing can make our GUI look not as good as we want it to be. We will add widgets to our GUI in the next recipes.

Resizable() is a method of the Tk() class and, by passing in (0, 0), we prevent the GUI from being resized. If we pass in other values, we hard-code the x and y start up size of the GUI, but that won't make it nonresizable.

We also added comments to our code in preparation for the recipes contained in this book.

Note

In visual programming IDEs such as Visual Studio .NET, C# programmers often do not think of preventing the user from resizing the GUI they developed in this language. That creates inferior GUIs. Adding this one line of Python code can make our users appreciate our GUI.

Visually different images

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

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Programming languages

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