Binding Keyboard Events with Tkinter – Python Tkinter GUI Tutorial #44

In this tutorial, we will be discussing how to bind keyboard events with tKinter in Python. Keyboard events are used to track the keys pressed on the keyboard and perform certain actions based on the key pressed. By binding keyboard events with tKinter, you can create interactive GUI applications that respond to user input via keyboard.

To get started, make sure you have the tKinter library installed in your Python environment. If you don’t have it installed, you can do so by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install tk

Once you have tKinter installed, you can begin by creating a basic GUI window using the following code:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

root.mainloop()

Now that you have a basic GUI window, let’s proceed with binding keyboard events. There are two main keyboard events that you can bind with tKinter:

1. Key Press Event: This event is triggered when a key is pressed on the keyboard.
2. Key Release Event: This event is triggered when a key is released on the keyboard.

To bind a keyboard event with tKinter, you can use the bind method on the root window object. Here’s an example of how you can bind a key press event:

def on_key_press(event):
    print(f"Key Pressed: {event.keysym}")

root.bind("<KeyPress>", on_key_press)

In this example, we defined a function on_key_press that takes an event argument. The event.keysym property returns the key that was pressed on the keyboard. We then use the bind method to bind the <KeyPress> event to the on_key_press function.

Similarly, you can bind a key release event using the following code:

def on_key_release(event):
    print(f"Key Released: {event.keysym}")

root.bind("<KeyRelease>", on_key_release)

Now that you have bound the keyboard events, you can perform any desired actions within the event handling functions. For example, you can update a label in the GUI window based on the key pressed:

label = tk.Label(root, text="")
label.pack()

def on_key_press(event):
    label.config(text=f"Key Pressed: {event.keysym}")

root.bind("<KeyPress>", on_key_press)

In this example, we created a label widget and updated its text property within the on_key_press function to display the key that was pressed on the keyboard.

Overall, binding keyboard events with tKinter allows you to create interactive and responsive GUI applications that respond to user input via keyboard. With the examples provided in this tutorial, you can now effectively incorporate keyboard event handling in your Python tKinter applications.