Mailing List Archive

Ben Gertzfield:
|After reading through the meagre documentation available for Tkinter,
|I've stumped myself. Is there any module available that will give
|me a pull-down list, similar to what appears in tkFileDialog, or
|any of the zillions of pull-down lists you see on web pages?
|
|I'm trying to make a graphical front-end to my ID3 MP3 info tag
|manipulator Python class, but Listbox is inappropriate when there
|are ~150 selections possible for one of the fields (the genre
|of the song) and I need to let the user select from one of them.
|
|How can I create a pull-down list with Tkinter?

Here are some simple and more complex ones:

http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/fyi/fyi34.htm
http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=451425547
http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=368413557

If you need to know when a variable in the menu is selected, you'll have to
drop down and use a Tk trace variable, or create your own enhanced
OptionMenu with a command callback. This shows how:

http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=462053022

Note also that Pmw (http://www.dscpl.com.au/pmw/) has a wrapper around the
OptionMenu and offers a ComboBox as well.

Randall

Ben Gertzfield <che@debian.org> wrote:
: After reading through the meagre documentation available for Tkinter,
: I've stumped myself. Is there any module available that will give
: me a pull-down list, similar to what appears in tkFileDialog, or
: any of the zillions of pull-down lists you see on web pages?

: I'm trying to make a graphical front-end to my ID3 MP3 info tag
: manipulator Python class, but Listbox is inappropriate when there
: are ~150 selections possible for one of the fields (the genre
: of the song) and I need to let the user select from one of them.

: How can I create a pull-down list with Tkinter?

I'm not sure if you mean a scrolled listbox or an extensible menu button.

I've created the latter (based a bit on a similar widget in tkdiff in
the TkCVS package).

#!/usr/local/bin/python

from Tkinter import *
import os

class Popup(Menubutton):
def __init__(self, master=None, list=None):
Menubutton.__init__(self, master, direction='right', relief=RAISED)
menu = self['menu'] = Menu(self)
l = len(list)
if l <= 10:
for p in xrange(l):
item = list[p]
menu.add_command(label='%d %s' % (p+1, str(item)))
else:
from math import sqrt
per_level = int(sqrt(l))
how_many, extra = divmod(l, per_level)
if extra:
how_many = how_many + 1
p = 0
for i in xrange(how_many):
submenu = Menu(self)
menu.add_cascade(label=`(i*per_level)+1`, menu=submenu)
for j in xrange(min(l-p, per_level)):
item = list[p]
submenu.add_command(label='%d %s' % (p+1, str(item)))
p = p + 1

if __name__ == '__main__':
m = Popup(None, os.listdir(os.environ['HOME']))
m['text'] = 'What?'
Button(text='Quit', command=m.quit).pack()
m.pack()
m.mainloop()

This creates a simple button which when pressed gives you a pop-up menu
of your home directory. If you have more than ten files in your home
directory, then you will get a submenu for each N files. The widget
isn't complete, but it suffices.

If you wanted a scrolled listbox, that is a bit easier:

class ScrolledListbox(Listbox):
def __init__(self, master, cnf={}, **kw):
from Tkinter import _cnfmerge
if kw:
cnf = _cnfmerge((cnf, kw))
else:
cnf = _cnfmerge(cnf)
frame = Frame(master, cnf)
Listbox.__init__(self, frame, relief=SUNKEN)
scroll = Scrollbar(master, relief=SUNKEN, command=self.yview)
scroll.pack(side=RIGHT, fill=Y, expand=YES)
self['yscrollcommand'] = scroll.set
self.pack(fill=BOTH, expand=YES)
# redefine "pack", "place" and "grid" to be the frame instance's methods
self.pack = frame.pack
self.place = frame.place
self.grid = frame.grid

Now use instances of ScrolledListbox as a regular listbox.

-Arcege