The answer that Jason S gave is not a good example. You can avoid any issues with sleep by just using after() instead. Don't settle for "Kinda works".
Here is a break down of how you could accomplish what you need without having the problems associated with sleep() and tkinter.
First you are importing Tk() wrong. Don't do tk.Tk do tk.Tk()
Now lets move the entire program into a single class. This will provide us with the ability to use class attributes and make things a bit easier to work with.
Here we create a class called guiapp(tk.Frame): you can name it what you want but this is just my example. Then make sure you are passing root using guiapp(root) so we can work in this class on the tk.Tk() instance. This will be shown at the bottom of the program where the class is instantiated.
Because we have passed root to the class we can place the button that opens the Toplevel window on our self.master attribute.
UPDATE: Changed how data is sent to the Textbox in Toplevel so we can retain the information in case you want to reopen top level. per your comment.
import tkinter as tk
class guiapp(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.master = master
self.value = 0.0
self.alive = True
self.list_for_toplevel = [] # added list to retain values for Toplevel
btn = tk.Button(self.master, text = "Click", command = self.TextWindow)
btn.pack()
Here we add the method to define the Topelevel we are going to create.
Because everything is inside this one class we can create this Topelevel as a Toplevel of self.master. At the end of this method we call the self.timed_loop() method I added that manages the timed portion of your program. UPDATE: added a call to a new function.
def TextWindow(self):
self.textWindow = tk.Toplevel(self.master)
self.textFrame = tk.Frame(self.textWindow)
self.textFrame.pack()
self.textArea = tk.Text(self.textWindow, height = 10, width = 30)
self.textArea.pack(side = "left", fill = "y")
bar = tk.Scrollbar(self.textWindow)
bar.pack(side = "right", fill = "y")
bar.config(command = self.textArea.yview)
self.alive = True
self.add_list_first()
UPDATE: Added a new function called add_list_first(self):. This will allow us to first add any values that are stored in the list then we can call timed_loop() to continue appending the list and counting.
def add_list_first(self):
for item in self.list_for_toplevel:
self.textArea.insert('end', "{}\n".format(item))
self.textArea.see('end')
self.timed_loop()
Here we have created a method to perform the task you have in you code for the Toplevel that uses the after() function from tkinter. ever 1000 is equal to 1 second, so play with that timer if you want. The first part of after() is for the time in milliseconds and the 2nd part is the function being called. In this case it calls itself to continue the loop until either the Toplevel window self.textWindow is closed or the self.alive variable is no longer True.
UPDATE: I have added a for loop to insert the list instead of directly imputing each value. This way we can retain the data if we want to reopen the Toplevel.
def timed_loop(self):
if self.alive == True and tk.Toplevel.winfo_exists(self.textWindow):
self.master.after(1000, self.timed_loop)
self.value += 1
self.list_for_toplevel.append(self.value)
self.textArea.delete(1.0, "end-1c")
for item in self.list_for_toplevel:
self.textArea.insert('end', "{}\n".format(item))
self.textArea.see('end')
else:
self.alive = False
This is the preferred way to start your class going in tkinter. As you can see we have created root as tk.Tk() and passed root into the the class guiapp(). Also note that I assigned this instance of the class to the variable name myapp. This will allow us to interact with the class from outside of the class if you ever need to. It does not make a difference in this case but I thought I would add it just the same.
if __name__ == "__main__":
root = tk.Tk()
myapp = guiapp(root)
root.mainloop()
Here is the copy paste version for you to use.
import tkinter as tk
class guiapp(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.master = master
self.value = 0.0
self.alive = True
self.list_for_toplevel = []
btn = tk.Button(self.master, text = "Click", command = self.TextWindow)
btn.pack()
def TextWindow(self):
self.textWindow = tk.Toplevel(self.master)
self.textFrame = tk.Frame(self.textWindow)
self.textFrame.pack()
self.textArea = tk.Text(self.textWindow, height = 10, width = 30)
self.textArea.pack(side = "left", fill = "y")
bar = tk.Scrollbar(self.textWindow)
bar.pack(side = "right", fill = "y")
bar.config(command = self.textArea.yview)
self.alive = True
self.add_list_first()
def add_list_first(self):
for item in self.list_for_toplevel:
self.textArea.insert('end', "{}\n".format(item))
self.textArea.see('end')
self.timed_loop()
def timed_loop(self):
if self.alive == True and tk.Toplevel.winfo_exists(self.textWindow):
self.master.after(1000, self.timed_loop)
self.value += 1
self.list_for_toplevel.append(self.value)
outputVal = str(self.value)
self.textArea.insert('end', "{0}\n".format(outputVal))
self.textArea.see('end')
else:
self.alive = False
if __name__ == "__main__":
root = tk.Tk()
myapp = guiapp(root)
root.mainloop()
