This is an unofficial mirror of Tkinter reference documentation (based on Python 2.7 and Tk 8.5) created by the late John Shipman.
It was last updated in 2013 and is unmaintained. [More info]
“Drop-down” menus are a popular way to present the user with a number of choices, yet take up minimal space on the face of the application when the user is not making a choice.
A menubutton is the part that always appears on the application.
A menu is the list of choices that appears only after the user clicks on the menubutton.
To select a choice, the user can drag the mouse from the menubutton down onto one of the choices. Alternatively, they can click and release the menubutton: the choices will appear and stay until the user clicks one of them.
The Unix version of Tkinter (at least) supports “tear-off menus.” If you as the designer wish it, a dotted line will appear above the choices. The user can click on this line to “tear off” the menu: a new, separate, independent window appears containing the choices.
Refer to Section 16, “The Menubutton
widget”, below, to see how to
create a menubutton and connect it to a menu widget. First
let's look at the Menu
widget, which
displays the list of choices.
The choices displayed on a menu may be any of these things:
A simple command: a text string (or image) that the user can select to perform some operation.
A cascade: a text string or image that the user can select to show another whole menu of choices.
A checkbutton (see Section 9, “The Checkbutton
widget”).
A group of radiobuttons (see Section 20, “The Radiobutton
widget”).
To create a menu widget, you must first have created a
Menubutton
, which we will call mb
:
w
= tk.Menu(mb,option
, ...)
This constructor returns the new Menu
widget. Options include:
Table 23. Menu
widget options
activebackground
| The background color that will appear on a choice when it is under the mouse. See Section 5.3, “Colors”. |
activeborderwidth
| Specifies the width of a border drawn around a choice when it is under the mouse. Default is 1 pixel. For possible values, see Section 5.1, “Dimensions”. |
activeforeground | The foreground color that will appear on a choice when it is under the mouse. |
bg or
background | The background color for choices not under the mouse. |
bd or
borderwidth | The width of the border around all the choices; see Section 5.1, “Dimensions”. The default is one pixel. |
cursor | The cursor that appears when the mouse is over the choices, but only when the menu has been torn off. See Section 5.8, “Cursors”. |
disabledforeground
|
The color of the text
for items whose state is tk.DISABLED .
|
font | The default font for textual choices. See Section 5.4, “Type fonts”. |
fg or
foreground | The foreground color used for choices not under the mouse. |
postcommand | You can set this option to a procedure, and that procedure will be called every time someone brings up this menu. |
relief |
The default 3-D effect for menus is relief=tk.RAISED . For other options, see
Section 5.6, “Relief styles”.
|
selectcolor | Specifies the color displayed in checkbuttons and radiobuttons when they are selected. |
tearoff |
Normally, a menu can be torn off: the first
position (position 0) in the list of choices is
occupied by the tear-off element, and the
additional choices are added starting at position
1. If you set tearoff=0 , the menu
will not have a tear-off feature, and choices will
be added starting at position 0.
|
tearoffcommand | If you would like your program to be notified when the user clicks on the tear-off entry in a menu, set this option to your procedure. It will be called with two arguments: the window ID of the parent window, and the window ID of the new tear-off menu's root window. |
title |
Normally, the title of a tear-off menu window will
be the same as the text of the menubutton or
cascade that lead to this menu. If you want to
change the title of that window, set the title option to that string.
|
These methods are available on Menu
objects.
The ones that create choices on the menu have their own
particular options; see Section 15.1, “Menu
item creation (coption
) options”.
.add(kind
, coption
, ...)
Add a new element of the given
as the next available
choice in this menu. The kind
argument may be any of
kind
'cascade'
, 'checkbutton'
, 'command'
, 'radiobutton'
, or 'separator'
. Depending on the
argument, this method is
equivalent to kind
.add_cascade()
, .add_checkbutton()
, and so on; refer to
those methods below for details.
.add_cascade(coption
, ...)
Add a new cascade element as the next available
choice in this menu. Use the menu
option in this call to
connect the cascade to the next level's menu, an
object of type Menu
.
.add_checkbutton(coption
, ...)
Add a new checkbutton as the next available choice in
self. The options allow you to set up the
checkbutton much the same way as you would set up a
Checkbutton
object; see Section 15.1, “Menu
item creation (coption
) options”.
.add_command(coption
, ...)
Add a new command as the next available choice in
self. Use the label
, bitmap
, or image
option to
place text or an image on the menu; use the command
option to connect this choice to a
procedure that will be called when this choice is
picked.
.add_radiobutton(coption
, ...)
Add a new radiobutton as the next available choice in
self. The options allow you to set up the radiobutton
in much the same way as you would set up a Radiobutton
object; see Section 20, “The Radiobutton
widget”.
.add_separator()
Add a separator after the last currently defined option. This is just a ruled horizontal line you can use to set off groups of choices. Separators are counted as choices, so if you already have three choices, and you add a separator, the separator will occupy position 3 (counting from 0).
.delete(index1
,
index2
=None)
This method deletes the choices numbered from
through
index1
,
inclusive. To delete one choice, omit the index2
argument.
You can't use this method to delete a tear-off
choice, but you can do that by setting the menu
object's index2
tearoff option to 0.
.entrycget(index
,
coption
)
To retrieve the current value of some coption for a choice,
call this method with
set to the
index of that choice and index
set to
the name of the desired option.
coption
.entryconfigure(index
,
coption
, ...)
To change the current value of some
for a choice,
call this method with coption
set to the
index of that choice and one or more index
arguments.
coption
=value
.index(i
)
Returns the position of the choice specified by index
. For
example, you can use i
.index(tk.END)
to
find the index of the last choice (or None
if there are no choices).
.insert_cascade(index
, coption
, ...)
Inserts a new cascade at the position given by
, counting
from 0. Any choices after that position move down
one. The options are the same as for index
.add_cascade()
, above.
.insert_checkbutton(index
, coption
, ...)
Insert a new checkbutton at the position specified by
index
. Options are the
same as for .add_checkbutton()
, above.
.insert_command(index
, coption
, ...)
Insert a new command at position
. Options
are the same as for index
.add_command()
,
above.
.insert_radiobutton(index
, coption
, ...)
Insert a new radiobutton at position
. Options
are the same as for index
.add_radiobutton()
, above.
.insert_separator(index
)
Insert a new separator at the position specified by
.
index
.invoke(index)
Calls the command
callback associated
with the choice at position
. If a
checkbutton, its state is toggled between set and
cleared; if a radiobutton, that choice is set.
index
.post(x
,
y
)
Display this menu at position (
relative to the root window.
x
, y
)
.type(index
)
Returns the type of the choice specified by
:
either index
tk.CASCADE
,
tk.CHECKBUTTON
,
tk.COMMAND
,
tk.RADIOBUTTON
,
tk.SEPARATOR
, or
tk.TEAROFF
.
.yposition(n
)
For the
menu choice, return the vertical offset in pixels
relative to the menu's top. The purpose of this
method is to allow you to place a popup menu
precisely relative to the current mouse position.
n
th