Integrating a click-Terminal in Tkinter?

Question

I wrote a CLI with click. Now I'm wondering if it would be possible to integrate this into a GUI with Tkinter. I know there are ways to embed a console into Tkinter, but I want to specifically know whether it is possible my CLI in it (with 'reasonable' effort).

So I have a Script:

@cli.command()
def myfunction()
    print("My Stuff")

And now I want to build a Tkinter GUI, where I have a command line, so that if I type myfunction there it calls and executes this myfunction Is that possible or should I just take the code underneath the CLI and build a Tkinter App with it, that is independent from the CLI?

Answer 1

For fun, I just made this tkinterify, which does what you're asking.

import tkinter
import click
import sys
from io import StringIO


def tkinterify(cli_group, app_name="Tkinterified App"):

    # Create and configure root
    root = tkinter.Tk()
    root.wm_title(app_name)
    tkinter.Grid.rowconfigure(root, 0, weight=1)
    tkinter.Grid.columnconfigure(root, 0, weight=1)

    # Create and configure frame
    frame = tkinter.Frame(root)
    frame.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")
    frame.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
    frame.columnconfigure(1, weight=1)
    frame.columnconfigure(2, weight=1)
    frame.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
    frame.rowconfigure(1, weight=1)

    initial_output = "Valid commands:\n"
    initial_command_name_list = list(cli_group.commands.keys())
    for available_command_name in initial_command_name_list:
        initial_output = initial_output + "  " + available_command_name + "\n"
    initial_output = initial_output + "Ready for input."

    # Some GUI widgets
    run_string = tkinter.StringVar()
    entry_run = tkinter.Entry(root, textvariable=run_string, width=50)
    scrollbar_widget = tkinter.Scrollbar(root)
    text_widget = tkinter.Text(root)

    def clear_callback():
        # Because the text widget is usually disabled, we have to explicitly enable it before we can write to it.
        text_widget.config(state='normal')
        text_widget.delete(1.0, tkinter.END)
        text_widget.insert(tkinter.END, initial_output)
        text_widget.config(state='disabled')

    def run_callback():
        command_args = []
        try:
            command_parts = run_string.get().split()
            command_name = command_parts[0]
        except IndexError:
            return
        if len(command_parts) > 1:
            command_args = command_parts[1:]

        if command_name:
            try:
                # Redirect stdout so we can read the output into a string for display within out GUI
                real_stdout = sys.stdout
                fake_stdout = StringIO()
                sys.stdout.flush()
                sys.stdout = fake_stdout

                # Obtain list of available commands
                available_commands = cli_group.commands
                command_name_list = list(cli_group.commands.keys())
                if command_name in command_name_list:
                    try:
                        # Make a fake context in which to run the command
                        context = available_commands[command_name].make_context("tkinter", command_args)
                        # Invoke the command within the fake context
                        available_commands[command_name].invoke(context)
                    except click.exceptions.UsageError as e:
                        print(e)
                        print(initial_output)
                else:
                    print("Command not found.\n")
                    print(initial_output)

                # Put stdout back
                sys.stdout.flush()
                sys.stdout = real_stdout
                sys.stdout.flush()
                output_string = fake_stdout.getvalue()
                fake_stdout.close()

                # Update the text output widget
                text_widget.config(state='normal')
                text_widget.delete(1.0, tkinter.END)
                text_widget.insert(tkinter.END, output_string)
                text_widget.config(state='disabled')

            except IndexError:
                pass

    # More GUI widgets
    button_run = tkinter.Button(root, text="Run", command=run_callback)
    button_clear = tkinter.Button(root, text="Clear", command=clear_callback)

    text_widget.delete(1.0, tkinter.END)
    text_widget.insert(tkinter.END, initial_output)

    entry_run.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="new")
    button_run.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky="n")
    button_clear.grid(row=0, column=2, sticky="n")
    text_widget.grid(row=1, column=0, columnspan=2, sticky="nsew")
    scrollbar_widget.grid(row=1, column=2, sticky="ns")

    scrollbar_widget.config(command=text_widget.yview)
    text_widget.config(yscrollcommand=scrollbar_widget.set)
    text_widget.config(state='disabled')

    root.mainloop()

I've put it on github as https://github.com/rbricheno/tkinterify with an example as follows:

import click
from tkinterify import tkinterify


@click.group()
def cli():
    pass


@click.command()
def my_function():
    print("My Stuff")


@click.command()
def my_other_function():
    print("More Things")


cli.add_command(my_function)
cli.add_command(my_other_function)

tkinterify(cli)

You may need to modify it if your scripts have large output or are complicated in other ways. I haven't tested how it handles arguments. Hopefully this gives you an idea how to do what you want.

The main trick is to add our click commands to a Group. Once they're added, we can easily get a reference to them using the dictionary in the_group.commands