Importing Tkinter

This section describes the different styles of importing Tkinter modules. In the preceding example, we imported Tkinter by using the following command:

from tkinter import *

This method of importing eases the handling of methods defined in the module. That is to say, you can simply access the methods directly. Generally, it is considered bad practice to import all (*) the methods of a module like we did here. This is so because this style of importing leads to memory flooding, namespace confusion, and difficulty in bug tracking and/or reviewing code. Importing into the global namespace can also lead to an accidental overwriting of methods from other libraries in the global namespace.

There are several ways to import Tkinter in which this overlapping can be avoided, with a common way being the following one:

import tkinter

This style of importing does not pollute the namespace with a list of all the methods defined within Tkinter. However, every method within Tkinter will now have to be called by using the tkinter.some_method format instead of directly calling the method.

Another commonly used import style is as follows:

import tkinter as tk

Here too, you do not pollute the current namespace with all the Tkinter methods. Now, you can access methods such as tk.some_method. The tk alias is convenient and easy to type. It is commonly used by many developers to import Tkinter.