Question

I’m developing a GUI application that models an essay. Among other things, the user can create a new topic and then populate that topic with notes. At the moment, I have two ways of creating new topics: through a dropdown option in the menu (the menu command) and through a button on the main screen (the button command). The button starts life with the text “New Topic”. When the user presses the button, the program makes a new topic, asks the user to name the topic using tkSimpleDialog.askstring, and then sets the button’s text to be the name of the topic and the number of notes in that topic. The button’s command then changes to be adding a note to that topic.

While developing the program, I first verified that the menu command worked. It calls askstring successfully, creating a new popup window that handles input in the way I wanted. However, as soon as I added the button command, the call to askstring failed, even when called via the menu command. The window that should have the askstring dialog is whited out and the program hangs. If I comment out the button command, it works again. If I comment out the menu command, it hangs.

Here’s the code where I add the command to the menu:

        TopicBtn.menu.add_command(label="New Topic", underline=0,
                                  command=self.newTopic)

Here’s the code for newTopic():

 def newTopic(self, button=None):
     """ Create a new topic. If a Button object is passed, associate that Button
          with the new topic. Otherwise, create a new Button for the topic. """

     topicPrompt = "What would you like to call your new topic?"
     topicName = tkSimpleDialog.askstring("New Topic", topicPrompt)

     if topicName in self.topics.keys():
         print "Error: topic already exists"

     else:
         newTopic = {}
         newTopic["name"] = topicName
         newTopic["notes"] = []
         newTopic["button"] = self.newTopicButton(newTopic, button)

         self.topics[topicName] = newTopic
         self.addToTopicLists(newTopic)

Here’s the code for newTopicButton():

 def newTopicButton(self, topic, button=None):
 """ If a Button object is passed, change its text to display the topic name.
      Otherwise, create and grid a new Button with the topic name. """

     if button is None:
         button = Button(self.topicFrame)
         index = len(self.topics)
         button.grid(row=index/self.TOPICS_PER_ROW, column=(index %
             self.TOPICS_PER_ROW), sticky=NSEW, padx=10, pady=10)
     else:
         button.unbind("<Button-1>")

     buttonText = "%s\n0 notes" % topic["name"]
     button.config(text=buttonText)
     button.config(command=(lambda s=self, t=topic: s.addNoteToTopic(t)))

     return button

And, finally, here’s the code for the button command:

for col in range(self.TOPICS_PER_ROW):
     button = Button(self.topicFrame, text="New Topic")
     button.bind("<Button-1>", (lambda e, s=self: s.newTopic(e.widget)))
     button.grid(row=0, column=col, sticky=NSEW, padx=10, pady=10)

Anybody have any idea why binding the lambda expression to the button makes askstring hang?

Edit: Thanks for the comments. Here’s a minimal example that exhibits the behavior:

from Tkinter import *
import tkSimpleDialog

class Min():

    def __init__(self, master=None):
        root = master
        frame = Frame(root)
        frame.pack()

        button = Button(frame, text="askstring")
        button.bind("<Button-1>", (lambda e, s=self: s.newLabel()))
        button.grid()

    def newLabel(self):
        label = tkSimpleDialog.askstring("New Label", "What should the label be?")
        print label

root = Tk()
m = Min(root)
root.mainloop()

Note that switching from button.bind("<Button-1>", (lambda e, s=self: s.newLabel())) to button = Button(frame, text="askstring", command=(lambda s=self: s.newLabel())) fixes the bug (but doesn’t give me a reference to the button that was pressed). I think the problem has something to do with capturing the event as one of the inputs to the lambda.

Answer 1

The problem you encountered here is due to the call to wait_window in the dialog you are using (you never call it yourself, but the code that implement the dialog does). For instance, the following code replicates the problem after (likely) two button clicks:

import Tkinter

def test(event=None):
    tl = Tkinter.Toplevel()
    tl.wait_window(tl)

root = Tkinter.Tk()
btn = Tkinter.Button(text=u'hi')
btn.bind('<Button-1>', test)
btn.pack(padx=10, pady=10)
root.mainloop()

This call to wait_window effectively does what the update command does, and is a typical example of why calling update is a bad thing to do. It enters in conflict with the <Button-1> event being handled, and hangs. The problem is that you will have to live with wait_window being used, since it belongs to the dialog’s code. Apparently, if you bind to <ButtonRelease-1> then this conflict never happens. You could also use the command parameter in the button, which works fine too.

Lastly, I suggest the following to create the buttons in a cleaner manner based on what you want to achieve:

for i in range(X):
    btn = Tkinter.Button(text=u'%d' % i)
    btn['command'] = lambda button=btn: some_callback(button)