how do i change the color of a specific word in a text widget in python

Question

So im making a kind of a python text editor and i want the script to scan the text for som specific words, and then change the color of the word (like in pycharm) something like this:

txt.get() = word
if word == "print":
(change color of text)

(i know there are a lot of similar questions out there about this, but i din't find anything that helped me)

You say you've seen similar questions and they didn't help. Can you show what you've tried? — Bryan Oakley, Dec 07 '19 at 14:59
by that i mean that the solutions in their problem didn't have a use in my version — Celeste-chan, Dec 07 '19 at 16:42

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 07 '19 at 19:02

There are some methods created for you to achieve this. I suggest read the Tk documentation (Text, Text.search(), Tags, Indexes)!

Tk provide the text.search method for you so you don't need to implement your own. Tk Text widget provide you tags which you can create and modify tags.

Workflow:
1. search for a pattern with the text.search() method that will return an index of the beginning position
2. create a tag with the text.tag_config()
3. add the created tag with the text.tag_add()

from tkinter import Tk, Entry, Button, Text, IntVar
from tkinter import font

class Text_tag_example():
    def __init__(self, master):
        self.master = master  
        self.my_font = font.Font(family="Helvetica",size=18)
        self.startindex = "1.0"     #needed for search method, index ("line, column")
        self.endindex = "end"       #needed for search method, index (end of index)
        self.init_widgets()

    def init_widgets(self):

        self.txt_widget = Text(self.master, font=self.my_font, 
                            height=10, width=40)
        self.txt_widget.grid(row=0, columnspan=2)
        self.ent_string = Entry(self.master, font=self.my_font)
        self.ent_string.grid(row=1, column=0)
        self.but_search = Button(self.master, text="Search", font=self.my_font,
                            command=self.search_word)
        self.but_search.grid(row=1, column=1)

    def search_word(self):
        word = self.ent_string.get()    #get string from entry 
        countVar = IntVar()             # contain the number of chars that matched
        searched_position = self.txt_widget.search(pattern=word, index=self.startindex, 
                                                stopindex=self.endindex, count=countVar)
        self.txt_widget.tag_config("a", foreground="blue", underline=1)
        endindex = "{}+{}c".format(searched_position, countVar.get())   #add index+length of word/pattern
        self.txt_widget.tag_add("a", searched_position, endindex)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    root = Tk()
    app = Text_tag_example(root)
    root.mainloop()

Usage:
-type in text widget "hello hi bye"
-type in entry widget "hi"
-press Search button
-"hi" should be blue and underlined

Probably your next question will be "How to tag all the same words in text?"
Again read the documentation otherwise you will not be able to understand it!

how do i change the color of a specific word in a text widget in python

1 Answers1