Python Chat with PySimpleGUI

PySimpleGUI is a Python package that makes it incredibly easy to create graphical user interfaces (GUI) for your Python programs. In this tutorial, we’ll cover how to create a simple chat application using PySimpleGUI.

Step 1: Installing PySimpleGUI
First things first, you’ll need to install PySimpleGUI. You can do this using pip, the Python package installer. Open your terminal or command prompt and type the following command:

pip install PySimpleGUI

This will install PySimpleGUI on your machine.

Step 2: Setting up the GUI
Now that PySimpleGUI is installed, let’s start by setting up the GUI for our chat application. Here’s some code to get you started:

import PySimpleGUI as sg

layout = [
    [sg.Text('Chat Messages:', size=(20, 1))],
    [sg.Multiline(size=(40, 10), key='-OUTPUT-', disabled=True)],
    [sg.InputText(size=(40, 1), key='-INPUT-')],
    [sg.Button('Send'), sg.Button('Exit')]
]

window = sg.Window('Chat App', layout)

In this code snippet, we’re creating a window with a Multiline element to display messages, an InputText element for the user to type messages, and two buttons for sending messages and exiting the application.

Step 3: Implementing the chat functionality
Next, let’s add the functionality to send and receive messages in our chat application. Here’s the code to do that:

while True:
    event, values = window.read()

    if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED or event == 'Exit':
        break

    if event == 'Send':
        message = values['-INPUT-']
        if message:
            window['-OUTPUT-'].print(f'You: {message}n')
            # Add code here to send message to other person
            # You can use sockets, APIs, or any other method to send messages
            window['-INPUT-'].update('')

In this code snippet, we’re continuously reading events from the window. If the user clicks on the ‘Exit’ button or closes the window, the loop will break and the application will exit. If the user clicks on the ‘Send’ button, we retrieve the message from the InputText element, display it in the Multiline element, and reset the InputText element.

Step 4: Running the chat application
To run your chat application, you just need to add the following code at the end of your script:

window.close()

This will close the window and terminate the application when the loop is exited.

And that’s it! You’ve now created a simple chat application using PySimpleGUI. Feel free to customize the layout and functionality to fit your needs. PySimpleGUI offers a lot of flexibility, so you can create all kinds of GUI applications with ease. Happy coding!