find index of elements created with window_create inside tkinter Text

Question

I used window_create to create interactive buttons inside a Text element. The buttons represent random or static values and I want to be able to compile the contents of the text element and replace the buttons with their respective values. However, I cannot find where any of the buttons are.

I've tried self.text.get("1.0",tk.END), but it only returns the text, not including the button elements

the button elements are created like so:

btn_text = tk.StringVar()
value = StaticValue('static', btn_text, self.custom_val_veiwer, idx)
button = tk.Button(self.text, 
                        textvariable=btn_text, command=lambda v=value: 
                        self.veiw_custom_val(None, val=v))
btn_text.set('static')
self.custom_vals.append(value)
self.text.window_create(tk.INSERT, window=button)

edit: if you want to recreate the problem use this:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()
text = tk.Text(root)
text.pack()

text.insert(tk.END, 'before button')

button = tk.Button(text, text='button')
text.window_create(tk.END, window=button)

text.insert(tk.END, 'after button')
print(text.get("1.0",tk.END))
root.mainloop()

notice how the button appears in the text field, but it is not printed out

(the output is before buttonafter button I want someting like before button<button>after button or a function that would tell me there is a button at row x at index y)

I'm a little unclear about what you are asking. Are you asking how the button command can know the index of the button that called the command? Or, are you asking how to get the contents of the text widget, with the buttons converted to text? — Bryan Oakley, May 10 '19 at 19:02

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 10 '19 at 19:06

There's nothing that gives you exactly what you want, but it just takes a couple lines of code to get the index of the clicked button.

What I would do is have the button pass a reference to itself as an argument to the command. That requires making the button in two steps, since you can't reference the button before it is created.

button = tk.Button(text, text="button")
button.configure(command=lambda button=button: handle_click(button))

In the function called by the button, you can use the text widget dump command to get a list of all windows, and from that you can find the index of the button. The dump command will return a list of tuples. Each tuple has a key (in this case, "window"), the window name, and the index of the window. You can iterate over the result of that command to find the index of the button which was passed to the function.

def handle_click(button):
    for (key, name, index) in text.dump("1.0", "end", window=True):
        if name == str(button):
            print("you clicked on the button at index {}".format(index))
            break

Example

Here is a contrived example that adds several buttons. Clicking on the button will display the index of that button in a label. Notice how it will continue to work even if you manually edit the text widget to change the index of the button.

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()
text = tk.Text(root)
label = tk.Label(root)
label.pack(side="top", fill="x")
text.pack(side="top", fill="both", expand=True)

def handle_click(button):
    for (key, name, index) in text.dump("1.0", "end", window=True):
        if name == str(button):
            label.configure(text="You clicked on the button at {}".format(index))
            break

for word in ("one", "two", "three", "four", "five"):
    text.insert("end", word + "\n")
    button = tk.Button(text, text="click me")
    button.configure(command=lambda button=button: handle_click(button))
    text.window_create("insert-1c", window=button)

tk.mainloop()

+1 mostly for providing some information about what the `Text` widget's [`dump()`](http://effbot.org/tkinterbook/text.htm#Tkinter.Text.dump-method) method returns. — martineau, May 10 '19 at 23:03
@martineau: here's an answer to another question where I write about the dump method: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52914354/tkinter-text-widget-as-html/52915925#52915925 — Bryan Oakley, May 11 '19 at 00:16

find index of elements created with window_create inside tkinter Text

1 Answers1

Example