Introduction to creating apps in Python using PySimpleGUI

PySimpleGUI is a Python library that allows you to easily create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for your Python applications. With PySimpleGUI, you can quickly build and design interactive windows, dialog boxes, and input forms for your programs.

In this tutorial, we will cover the basics of PySimpleGUI and walk you through how to create your first GUI application using this powerful library.

Installing PySimpleGUI

Before diving into creating GUI applications with PySimpleGUI, you need to install the library. You can do this easily using pip, the Python package manager. Open your command prompt or terminal and run the following command:

pip install PySimpleGUI

Creating your first PySimpleGUI application

Now that you have PySimpleGUI installed, let’s create a simple GUI application that displays a window with a text input field and a submit button. Create a new Python file and import the PySimpleGUI library:

import PySimpleGUI as sg

Next, we will define our layout for the GUI window. The layout is a list of lists that specifies the elements you want to display in the window. In this example, we will have a text input field and a submit button:

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

After defining the layout, we can create our window by calling the sg.Window constructor and passing in the title of the window and the layout we defined:

window = sg.Window("Hello World App", layout)

Now, we need to create a loop to listen for user input and events in the window. Inside the loop, we will check for events using the read method and handle any events that occur. In this example, we will display a popup window with the entered text when the submit button is clicked:

while True:
    event, values = window.read()
    if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED or event == "Submit":
        sg.popup("Hello, " + values[0])
        break

Finally, we need to close the window once the user has interacted with it by calling the close method:

window.close()

Running your PySimpleGUI application

You can run your PySimpleGUI application by executing the Python script you just created. The window should appear with the text input field and submit button. Enter your name in the input field and click the submit button to see a popup window displaying a greeting message.

Congratulations, you have created your first GUI application using PySimpleGUI! This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what you can achieve with PySimpleGUI. With its simple and intuitive API, you can build complex and feature-rich GUIs for your Python applications in no time.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we covered the basics of PySimpleGUI and demonstrated how to create a simple GUI application using the library. PySimpleGUI is a versatile and beginner-friendly tool that makes building GUIs in Python a breeze. Experiment with different layouts, widgets, and event handlers to create custom and interactive GUIs for your projects. Happy coding!