Designing Graphic User Interfaces using PySimpleGUI by Michael Driscoll

Creating GUIs with PySimpleGUI

PySimpleGUI is a Python library that makes it easy to create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) quickly and easily. In this tutorial, we will go over the basics of creating GUIs with PySimpleGUI and walk through a simple example to demonstrate how to create a basic GUI.

Installation:

Before you can start using PySimpleGUI, you need to install it on your system. You can install PySimpleGUI using pip by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install pysimplegui

Once the installation is complete, you can start creating GUIs in your Python scripts.

Creating a GUI:

To create a GUI with PySimpleGUI, you need to import the library at the beginning of your script:

import PySimpleGUI as sg

Next, you can define the layout of your GUI. The layout is a list of lists that contains the elements that you want to display in your GUI. Each element is represented by a PySimpleGUI element object, such as Text, Input, Button, etc.

For example, here is a simple layout that contains a text input field and a button:

layout = [
    [sg.Text('Enter your name:'), sg.InputText()],
    [sg.Button('Submit')]
]

Once you have defined the layout, you can create the GUI window using the sg.Window() function:

window = sg.Window('My First GUI', layout)

The first argument of the sg.Window() function is the title of the window, and the second argument is the layout that you defined earlier.

Handling Events:

After creating the GUI window, you need to define an event loop to handle user interaction with the GUI. In the event loop, you can listen for events, such as button clicks, text input, etc., and respond to them accordingly.

Here is an example event loop that listens for the ‘Submit’ button click event and displays a message box with the entered text:

while True:
    event, values = window.read()
    if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED or event == 'Exit':
        break
    if event == 'Submit':
        name = values[0]
        sg.popup(f'Hello, {name}!')

In this event loop, the window.read() function retrieves the event that occurred in the GUI window, and the values that were entered in the input fields. The event variable contains the name of the event, and the values variable contains the values of the input fields in a list.

Closing the Window:

Finally, you need to close the GUI window when the event loop exits. You can do this by calling the window.close() function:

window.close()

Putting It All Together:

Here is the complete script that creates a simple GUI with a text input field and a button:

import PySimpleGUI as sg

layout = [
    [sg.Text('Enter your name:'), sg.InputText()],
    [sg.Button('Submit')]
]

window = sg.Window('My First GUI', layout)

while True:
    event, values = window.read()
    if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED or event == 'Exit':
        break
    if event == 'Submit':
        name = values[0]
        sg.popup(f'Hello, {name}!')

window.close()

Run this script in your Python environment, and you will see a simple GUI window with a text input field and a button. When you enter your name and click the submit button, a message box will pop up with a greeting message.

Conclusion:

Creating GUIs with PySimpleGUI is a straightforward and intuitive process. By following the steps outlined in this tutorial, you can create custom GUIs for your Python applications quickly and easily. PySimpleGUI provides a wide range of GUI elements and customization options, making it a versatile tool for creating powerful and interactive user interfaces in Python.