In part 21 of my Learn to Program series I made all of the parts of a simple text editor except for the part where you enter text! So, in this video we’ll create a dialog for opening files, create a dialog for saving files, add a text widget with a scrollbar widget, add a menu for review and much more. For homework after completing this program add in the parts from part 21 for more functionality.

All of the code and a transcript follows the video below.

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Code & Transcript

from tkinter import *
import tkinter.filedialog

class TextEditor:

    # Quits the TkInter app when called
    @staticmethod
    def quit_app(event=None):
        root.quit()

    def open_file(self, event=None):

        txt_file = tkinter.filedialog.askopenfilename(parent=root,
                                                      initialdir='/Users/derekbanas/PycharmProjects')

        if txt_file:

            self.text_area.delete(1.0, END)

            # Open file and put text in the text widget
            with open(txt_file) as _file:
                self.text_area.insert(1.0, _file.read())

                # Update the text widget
                root.update_idletasks()

    def save_file(self, event=None):

        # Opens the save as dialog box
        file = tkinter.filedialog.asksaveasfile(mode='w')
        if file != None:
            # Get text in the text widget and delete the last newline
            data = self.text_area.get('1.0', END + '-1c')

            # Write the text and close
            file.write(data)
            file.close()

    def __init__(self, root):

        self.text_to_write = ""

        # Define title for the app
        root.title("Text Editor")

        # Defines the width and height of the window
        root.geometry("600x550")

        frame = Frame(root, width=600, height=550)

        # Create the scrollbar
        scrollbar = Scrollbar(frame)

        # yscrollcommand connects the scroll bar to the text
        # area
        self.text_area = Text(frame, width=600, height=550,
                        yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set,
                        padx=10, pady=10)

        # Call yview when the scrollbar is moved
        scrollbar.config(command=self.text_area.yview)

        # Put scroll bar on the right and fill in the Y direction
        scrollbar.pack(side="right", fill="y")

        # Pack on the left and fill available space
        self.text_area.pack(side="left", fill="both", expand=True)
        frame.pack()

        # Create the menu object
        the_menu = Menu(root)

        # Create a pull down menu that can't be removed
        file_menu = Menu(the_menu, tearoff=0)

        # Add items to the menu that show when clicked
        # compound allows you to add an image
        file_menu.add_command(label="Open", command=self.open_file)
        file_menu.add_command(label="Save", command=self.save_file)

        # Add a horizontal bar to group similar commands
        file_menu.add_separator()

        # Call for the function to execute when clicked
        file_menu.add_command(label="Quit", command=self.quit_app)

        # Add the pull down menu to the menu bar
        the_menu.add_cascade(label="File", menu=file_menu)

        # Display the menu bar
        root.config(menu=the_menu)

root = Tk()

text_editor = TextEditor(root)

root.mainloop()