Developing a Hamster Messaging App UI using Kivy and KivyMD in Python | With SJ | Part 3 #shorts

Welcome to part 3 of our tutorial on developing a messaging app UI using Kivy and KivyMD in Python. In this part of the tutorial, we will continue building on what we have done in parts 1 and 2, and focus on creating the chat screen UI for our messaging app.

Before we begin, make sure you have Kivy and KivyMD installed in your Python environment. If you haven’t done so already, you can install them by running the following commands:

pip install kivy
pip install kivymd

Now, let’s start by creating a new Python file called chat_screen.py where we will define the UI for the chat screen. We will also need to import some modules, so at the top of the file, add the following lines:

from kivy.uix.screenmanager import Screen
from kivymd.uix.boxlayout import MDBoxLayout
from kivymd.uix.textfield import MDTextField
from kivymd.uix.button import MDIconButton

Next, let’s define the ChatScreen class which will represent the chat screen in our app. We will also define some basic layout for the chat screen, including a text input field for typing messages and a send button. Here is the code for the ChatScreen class:

class ChatScreen(Screen):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(ChatScreen, self).__init__(**kwargs)

        layout = MDBoxLayout(orientation='vertical')

        text_input = MDTextField(hint_text='Type a message...')
        layout.add_widget(text_input)

        send_button = MDIconButton(icon='send')
        layout.add_widget(send_button)

        self.add_widget(layout)

In this code, we are creating a vertical MDBoxLayout to hold our text input and send button. We add the text input and send button widgets to the layout, and then add the layout to the chat screen.

Now that we have the basic layout set up, let’s add some styling to make our chat screen look more like a messaging app. We can do this by modifying the attributes of the text input and send button widgets. Here is how you can update the ChatScreen class to include some styling:

class ChatScreen(Screen):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super(ChatScreen, self).__init__(**kwargs)

        layout = MDBoxLayout(orientation='vertical', padding=20)

        text_input = MDTextField(hint_text='Type a message...', size_hint_y=None, height=60)
        layout.add_widget(text_input)

        send_button = MDIconButton(icon='send', size_hint=(None, None), size=(60, 60))
        layout.add_widget(send_button)

        self.add_widget(layout)

In this code, we have added some padding to the layout and set the height of the text input to 60 pixels. We have also set the size of the send button to 60×60 pixels.

That’s it for part 3 of our tutorial on developing a messaging app UI using Kivy and KivyMD in Python. In the next part, we will add functionality to our chat screen, such as sending and receiving messages. Stay tuned for more!