CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmultithreadingtkinter
Irina Maria
Irina Maria

Reputation: 21

Trouble with Timer thread and tkInter

I'm doing my first big project which is a quiz. I am stuck on trying to limit the time the user has to answer a question. I've searched and the only option that seems to work is using a timer thread. I'm not familiar with threading or any slightly advanced tkInter at all so I'm all ears.

def revisionMode(question):
    inputAnswer = StringVar()

    #-----Creation & placement of buttons and labels
    qLabel = Label(screen1, text = question.prompt[0]
    qLabel.grid(row = 6, column = 2)

    answerBox = Entry(screen1, textvariable = inputAnswer)
    answerBox.grid(column = 2, row = 10)

    t = Timer(7.0, nextQuestion, args=(False, question.difficulty), kwargs=None)
    t.start()

    #-----The button that will trigger the validation of the answer
    Button(screen1, text = "Submit", command = lambda: checkAnswer(question)).grid(column = 3, row = 9)

The error I get from that is that is:

RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop.

From my understanding and googling, tkinter and threading don't work together very well and I've seen solutions using Queues.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 47

Answers (1)

Bryan Oakley
Bryan Oakley

Reputation: 385970

You don't need a timer thread for something this simple. Tkinter widgets have a method named after which can be used to run commands in the future.

For example, to call nextQuestion after 7 seconds, you would do this:

screen1.after(7000, nextQuestion, False, question.difficulty)

If you want to cancel the timer, save the return value and use it in a call to after_cancel:

after_id = screen1.after(7000, nextQuestion, False, question.difficulty)
...
screen1.after_cancel(after_id)

Upvotes: 1

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