Tkinter: creating checkbuttons with for loop Python

Question

So I'm trying to use a for loop to create multiple check buttons in Tkinter by iterating over a nested list with the text that I want to display and its variable.

The reason that I'm trying to automate this is that I may want to change the number of check buttons that I have in the future, so I thought it would be easier incorporating it in a list (that I can change later) instead of doing it manually. Here's what I've tried:

from tkinter import *

class Application(Frame):

    def __init__(self, master):
        super(Application, self).__init__(master)
        self.grid()
        self.create_widgets()

    def create_widgets(self):
        checkbttn_info = \ # nested list
        [("General Purposes", self.general_purposes),
        ("Young People",self.young_people),
        ("Education And Learning", self.education_and_learning),
        ("Healthcare Sector",self.healthcare_sector),
        ("Arts Or Heritage", self.arts_or_heritage),
        ("Infrastructure Support", self.infrastructure_support)
        ("Regenerating Areas", self.regenerating_areas)
        ("Community Cohesion", self.community_cohesion)]

        row, col = 2, 0
        for variable in checkbttn_info:
            variable[1] = BooleanVar()
            Checkbutton(self,
                    variable = variable[1],
                    text = variable[0]).grid(row = row, column = col, sticky = W)
            if col == 2:
               col = 0
               row +=1
            else:
               col +=1

Unfortunately, I get the exception:

AttributeError: 'Application' object has no attribute 'general_purposes'

I think I understand why this is but I don't know how to fix it. The Application object doesn't have any 'general_purposes' attribute because I haven't instantiated it with the BooleanVar() object, however, no other way to do it springs to mind apart from above. I try to instantiate it within the for loop but it obviously doesn't work...

Is there a way to fix the exception or a better way to do it overall? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

figbeam · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-02 01:01:45Z

1

The most obvious solution I can see is to make a list of names (["General Purposes", "Young People", ...]) and use the list in the for loop. Then let the loop create the variables and add them to a dict with the names as keys and the variables as values;

from tkinter import *

class Application(Frame):

    def __init__(self, master):
        super(Application, self).__init__(master)
        self.grid()
        self.create_widgets()

    def create_widgets(self):
        name_list = ["General Purposes", "Young People",
                     "Education And Learning", "Healthcare Sector",
                     "Arts Or Heritage", "Infrastructure Support",
                     "Regenerating Areas", "Community Cohesion"]

        row, col = 2, 0
        widget_dict = {}
        for name in name_list:
            variable = BooleanVar()
            c = Checkbutton(self, variable=variable, text=name)
            c.grid(row = row, column = col, sticky = W)
            widget_dict[name] = variable
            if col == 2:
               col = 0
               row +=1
            else:
               col +=1

root = Tk()
app = Application(root)
root.mainloop()

If you want to keep it as simple as possible you can just declare them all in the create_widgets() function before you add them to the checkbttn_info list.

edited Jan 2, 2019 at 1:01

answered Jan 2, 2019 at 0:54

figbeam

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2 Comments

Tom_G_99 Over a year ago

Thanks! That works perfectly. Do you mind explaining why it's important to store them in a dictionary?

figbeam Over a year ago

The dictionary allows me to associate the variable with a value I can search for: the key. If I don't mind having several lists I can store the values in a list as well and locate the index by searching the name_list. Once I have the dict or a couple of lists it's easy to convert to a list of tuples or other format if you want that.

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