Ttk Tutorial Part 3: Popup menu

Purpose

In this third part of the tutorial I will deter from the usual path of taking on every standard widget and show you how to create a window with a popup menu using tkinter.ttk.

Difficulty: moderately easy (3/10)

Example: A window with popup menu

This example details how to create a root window class with a popup. The result will look like this:



Code for the example (gist):

    1 from tkinter import *
    2 from tkinter.ttk import *
    3
    4 class root_window_with_popup(Tk):
    5         def __init__(self):
    6                 Tk.__init__(self)
    7                 self.geometry('400x300')
    8                 self.title(__file__)
    9
   10                 self.label = Label(self, text='Right click to show popup')
   11                 self.label.pack(anchor = N, fill=NONE, expand=YES, pady = 40)
   12
   13                 self.popup = Menu(self, tearoff=0)
   14                 self.popup.add_command(label="Quit", command=self.destroy)
   15
   16                 self.bind("<button-3>", self.do_popup)
   17
   18                 self.mainloop()
   19
   20         def do_popup(self, event):
   21                 self.popup.tk_popup(event.x_root, event.y_root, 0)
   22
   23 if __name__ == '__main__':
   24         root_window_with_popup()

Explanation of the code:

So what does the root window class do?

1. (6-8) Call parent constructor, set size settings, set title.
2. (10-11) Add a helpful label to the window that instructs what to do.
   
3. (13-14) Create the menu, like in the previous example. It just is not nested here.
4. (16) Call the do_popup callback method on the press of the third mouse button. Note: this is the first place I show the bind method. It is used to connect events with actions/methods, much like the command keyword for the menu entries.
   
5. (21): Display the popup window at the position of the mouse (which is passed as event).
   

Commands reference

• tkinter.Menu.tk_popup(x, y, entry='')
  • x, y: root coordinates of where to display the popup menu
  • entry: index of the entry which is selected