Adding a menu to Tkinter

[John Posner]

Ronn Ross wrote:

> I'm attempting to add a menu bar to my Tkinter app. I can't figure out the correct syntax. Can someone help?  I get this error when I run the app:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "tkgrid.py", line 26, in <module>
>
>     app = App(root)
>   File "tkgrid.py", line 10, in __init__
>     menubar = Menu(master).grid(row=0)
>   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1859, in grid_configure
>
>     + self._options(cnf, kw))
> _tkinter.TclError: can't manage ".4300345712": it's a top-level window
>
>
> from Tkinter import *
>
> class App:
>
>     def __init__(self, master):
>         
>
>         def hello():
>             print "hello!"
>
>         menubar = Menu(master).grid(row=0)
>         menubar.add_command(label="Hello!", command=hello)
>         Label(master, text="First").grid(row=1)
>
>         Label(master, text="Second").grid(row=2)
>     
>         e1 = Entry(master)
>         e2 = Entry(master)
>         e3 = Entry(master)
>
>         e1.grid(row=0, column=1)
>         e2.grid(row=1, column=1)
>
>         e2.grid(row=2, column=1)
>
>
> root = Tk()
>
> app = App(root)
>
> root.mainloop()
>   


Ronn, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but it looks like 
you're getting wrapped around the axle a bit. Did you want your "App" 
object to instantiate a new Tkinter window, in addition to the "root" 
window? For that, you'd need to do this:

  class App(Toplevel):
       ...


But maybe you don't really want/need to do that. Here's a template for 
creating a single Tkinter window, with a menubar that contains a single 
menu item, "File". And clicking the "File" item, opens a submenu with a 
single command, "Hello".

#--------------------------
from Tkinter import *

def hello():
    print "hello!"

class App(Tk):
    def __init__(self):
        Tk.__init__(self)
   
    # create a Menu object
    mbar = Menu(self)
    # set this Menu to be the App window's menu bar   
    self['menu'] = mbar

    # create another Menu object
    fileMenu = Menu(mbar)
    # set this Menu to be a submenu of the menu bar, under the name "File"
    mbar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=fileMenu)
   
    # add a command named "Hello" to the submenu, and have it
    # invoke the function "hello"
    fileMenu.add_command(label="Hello", command=hello)

app = App()
app.mainloop()
#--------------------------

Note that instead of this:

    self['menu'] = mbar

... you could use this:

    self.config(menu=mbar)

HTH,
-John