Tkinter, StringVar and dict

[James Stroud]

Kevin Walzer wrote:
> I'm trying to manage user preferences in a Tkinter application by 
> initializing some values that can then be configured from a GUI. The 
> values are set up as a dict, like so:
> 
>   self.prefs= {
>             'interface': '-en1',
>             'verbose': '-v',
>             'fontname': 'Courier',
>             'point': 12,
>             }
> 
> To link these values to the appropriate Tkinter variables, I'm using 
> code like this:
> 
>  self.prefs['interface'] = StringVar()
>  self.prefs['interface'].set("-en0") # initialize

Are you sure this particular "prefs" is a dictionary and not some kind 
of Tkinter entity, like, say, a Toplevel?

E.g.

py> from Tkinter import *
py> L = Label()
py> L['prefs'] = 'avalue'
------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<ipython console>", line 1, in <module>
   File 
"/data10/users/jstroud/Programs/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 
1204, in __setitem__
     self.configure({key: value})
   File 
"/data10/users/jstroud/Programs/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 
1197, in configure
     return self._configure('configure', cnf, kw)
   File 
"/data10/users/jstroud/Programs/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 
1188, in _configure
     self.tk.call(_flatten((self._w, cmd)) + self._options(cnf))
<class '_tkinter.TclError'>: unknown option "-prefs"

Does this error message look familiar?

Consider:

py> L['text'] = 'bob'
py> L.cget('text')
'bob'
py> L.config(text='carol')
py> L.cget('text')
'carol'


James




> This raises an error in Tkinter:
> 
> Exception in Tkinter callback
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File 
> "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", 
> line 1403, in __call__
>     return self.func(*args)
>   File "/Users/kevin/Programming/packetstream/packetstream-classes.py", 
> line 293, in setPrefs
>     self.prefs['interface'] = StringVar()
>   File 
> "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", 
> line 3237, in __setitem__
>     self.tk.call(self.name, 'configure', '-'+key, value)
> TclError: unknown option "-interface"
> 
> Can someone help me smooth this out--to get dict key-values into a 
> Tkinter variable like StringVar()?
> 
> Thanks.
> 


-- 
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/