How to get a string from a tkinter filedialog in Python 3?
Python is a popular programming language that is widely used for creating applications in various domains. It is easy to learn, have a simple syntax, and provides an extensive library of modules that make the development process faster and efficient. In this article, we will learn how to get a string from a Tkinter filedialog in Python 3.
Tkinter filedialog
Tkinter is a standard GUI library that comes with Python. It provides various widgets such as buttons, labels, frames, etc., that we can use to create graphical user interfaces for our Python applications. Tkinter also provides a filedialog widget that allows users to select files or directories. File dialog widget can be used by importing filedialog
module from tkinter.
from tkinter import filedialog
What we want to achieve?
We want to open a file dialog box, get the file path from the user and store it in a variable.
Steps to achieve this
- Import the
tkinter
module and thefiledialog
module.
from tkinter import *
from tkinter import filedialog
- Create a new instance of the
Tk()
class which represents the main window of our application.
root = Tk()
- Hide the main window because we only want to display the file dialog box.
root.withdraw()
- Open the file dialog box using the
filedialog.askopenfilename()
method. This method returns the file path as a string.
file_path = filedialog.askopenfilename()
- Display the file path in a message box to confirm that the file path has been successfully obtained.
from tkinter import messagebox
messagebox.showinfo("Selected File path", file_path)
- Exit the application. We must use the
tkinter.Tk().destroy()
method to exit the main window of the application.
root.destroy()
Sample code
from tkinter import *
from tkinter import filedialog, messagebox
root = Tk()
root.withdraw()
file_path = filedialog.askopenfilename()
messagebox.showinfo("Selected File path", file_path)
root.destroy()
Explanation of Sample code
We have imported the tkinter
module and filedialog
and messagebox
from it. We create an instance of Tk()
to represent the main window of the application. We hide the main window using withdraw()
. Then, we use the askopenfilename()
method with filedialog
to open the file dialog box and get the file path as a string. We display the file path in a message box using the showinfo()
method of the messagebox
module. Lastly, we use the destroy()
method of Tk()
to exit the program.
Conclusion
In this article, we have learned how to use the tkinter
module’s filedialog
to get a string from a file dialog in Python 3. We have also learned how to display the file path in a message box and exit the application correctly. This skill is essential for any developer building GUI applications with Python, as it allows you to create a user interface that lets users interact with files on their computer. Use this knowledge to improve your application development skills and create robust and user-friendly applications.