How to get Tkinter input from the Text widget?

EDIT

I asked this question to help others with the same problem – that is the reason why there is no example code. This issue had been troubling me for hours and I used this question to teach others. Please do not rate it as if it was a real question – the answer is the thing that matters.

To get Tkinter input from the text box, you must add a few more attributes to the normal .get() function. If we have a text box myText_Box, then this is the method for retrieving its input.

def retrieve_input():
    input = self.myText_Box.get("1.0",END)

The first part, "1.0" means that the input should be read from line one, character zero (ie: the very first character). END is an imported constant which is set to the string "end". The END part means to read until the end of the text box is reached. The only issue with this is that it actually adds a newline to our input. So, in order to fix it we should change END to end-1c(Thanks Bryan Oakley) The -1c deletes 1 character, while -2c would mean delete two characters, and so on.

def retrieve_input():
    input = self.myText_Box.get("1.0",'end-1c')

Here is how I did it with python 3.5.2:

from tkinter import *
root=Tk()
def retrieve_input():
    inputValue=textBox.get("1.0","end-1c")
    print(inputValue)

textBox=Text(root, height=2, width=10)
textBox.pack()
buttonCommit=Button(root, height=1, width=10, text="Commit", 
                    command=lambda: retrieve_input())
#command=lambda: retrieve_input() >>> just means do this when i press the button
buttonCommit.pack()

mainloop()

with that, when i typed “blah blah” in the text widget and pressed the button, whatever i typed got printed out. So i think that is the answer for storing user input from Text widget to variable.

To get Tkinter input from the text box in python 3 the complete student level program used by me is as under:

#Imports all (*) classes,
#atributes, and methods of tkinter into the
#current workspace

from tkinter import *

#***********************************
#Creates an instance of the class tkinter.Tk.
#This creates what is called the "root" window. By conventon,
#the root window in Tkinter is usually called "root",
#but you are free to call it by any other name.

root = Tk()
root.title('how to get text from textbox')


#**********************************
mystring = StringVar()

####define the function that the signup button will do
def getvalue():
##    print(mystring.get())
#*************************************

Label(root, text="Text to get").grid(row=0, sticky=W)  #label
Entry(root, textvariable = mystring).grid(row=0, column=1, sticky=E) #entry textbox

WSignUp = Button(root, text="print text", command=getvalue).grid(row=3, column=0, sticky=W) #button


############################################
# executes the mainloop (that is, the event loop) method of the root
# object. The mainloop method is what keeps the root window visible.
# If you remove the line, the window created will disappear
# immediately as the script stops running. This will happen so fast
# that you will not even see the window appearing on your screen.
# Keeping the mainloop running also lets you keep the
# program running until you press the close buton
root.mainloop()

In order to obtain the string in a Text widget one can simply use get method defined for Text which accepts 1 to 2 arguments as start and end positions of characters, text_widget_object.get(start, end=None). If only start is passed and end isn’t passed it returns only the single character positioned at start, if end is passed as well, it returns all characters in between positions start and end as string.

There are also special strings, that are variables to the underlying Tk. One of them would be "end" or tk.END which represents the variable position of the very last char in the Text widget. An example would be to returning all text in the widget, with text_widget_object.get('1.0', 'end') or text_widget_object.get('1.0', 'end-1c') if you don’t want the last newline character.

Demo

See below demonstration that selects the characters in between the given positions with sliders:

try:
    import tkinter as tk
except:
    import Tkinter as tk


class Demo(tk.LabelFrame):
    """
    A LabeFrame that in order to demonstrate the string returned by the
    get method of Text widget, selects the characters in between the
    given arguments that are set with Scales.
    """

    def __init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs):
        tk.LabelFrame.__init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs)
        self.start_arg = ''
        self.end_arg = None
        self.position_frames = dict()
        self._create_widgets()
        self._layout()
        self.update()


    def _create_widgets(self):
        self._is_two_args = tk.Checkbutton(self,
                                    text="Use 2 positional arguments...")
        self.position_frames['start'] = PositionFrame(self,
                                    text="start='{}.{}'.format(line, column)")
        self.position_frames['end'] = PositionFrame(   self,
                                    text="end='{}.{}'.format(line, column)")
        self.text = TextWithStats(self, wrap='none')
        self._widget_configs()


    def _widget_configs(self):
        self.text.update_callback = self.update
        self._is_two_args.var = tk.BooleanVar(self, value=False)
        self._is_two_args.config(variable=self._is_two_args.var,
                                    onvalue=True, offvalue=False)
        self._is_two_args['command'] = self._is_two_args_handle
        for _key in self.position_frames:
            self.position_frames[_key].line.slider['command'] = self.update
            self.position_frames[_key].column.slider['command'] = self.update


    def _layout(self):
        self._is_two_args.grid(sticky='nsw', row=0, column=1)
        self.position_frames['start'].grid(sticky='nsew', row=1, column=0)
        #self.position_frames['end'].grid(sticky='nsew', row=1, column=1)
        self.text.grid(sticky='nsew', row=2, column=0,
                                                    rowspan=2, columnspan=2)
        _grid_size = self.grid_size()
        for _col in range(_grid_size[0]):
            self.grid_columnconfigure(_col, weight=1)
        for _row in range(_grid_size[1] - 1):
            self.grid_rowconfigure(_row + 1, weight=1)


    def _is_two_args_handle(self):
        self.update_arguments()
        if self._is_two_args.var.get():
            self.position_frames['end'].grid(sticky='nsew', row=1, column=1)
        else:
            self.position_frames['end'].grid_remove()


    def update(self, event=None):
        """
        Updates slider limits, argument values, labels representing the
        get method call.
        """

        self.update_sliders()
        self.update_arguments()


    def update_sliders(self):
        """
        Updates slider limits based on what's written in the text and
        which line is selected.
        """

        self._update_line_sliders()
        self._update_column_sliders()


    def _update_line_sliders(self):
        if self.text.lines_length:
            for _key in self.position_frames:
                self.position_frames[_key].line.slider['state'] = 'normal'
                self.position_frames[_key].line.slider['from_'] = 1
                _no_of_lines = self.text.line_count
                self.position_frames[_key].line.slider['to'] = _no_of_lines
        else:
            for _key in self.position_frames:
                self.position_frames[_key].line.slider['state'] = 'disabled'


    def _update_column_sliders(self):
        if self.text.lines_length:
            for _key in self.position_frames:
                self.position_frames[_key].column.slider['state'] = 'normal'
                self.position_frames[_key].column.slider['from_'] = 0
                _line_no = int(self.position_frames[_key].line.slider.get())-1
                _max_line_len = self.text.lines_length[_line_no]
                self.position_frames[_key].column.slider['to'] = _max_line_len
        else:
            for _key in self.position_frames:
                self.position_frames[_key].column.slider['state'] = 'disabled'


    def update_arguments(self):
        """
        Updates the values representing the arguments passed to the get
        method, based on whether or not the 2nd positional argument is
        active and the slider positions.
        """

        _start_line_no = self.position_frames['start'].line.slider.get()
        _start_col_no = self.position_frames['start'].column.slider.get()
        self.start_arg = "{}.{}".format(_start_line_no, _start_col_no)
        if self._is_two_args.var.get():
            _end_line_no = self.position_frames['end'].line.slider.get()
            _end_col_no = self.position_frames['end'].column.slider.get()
            self.end_arg = "{}.{}".format(_end_line_no, _end_col_no)
        else:
            self.end_arg = None
        self._update_method_labels()
        self._select()


    def _update_method_labels(self):
        if self.end_arg:
            for _key in self.position_frames:
                _string = "text.get('{}', '{}')".format(
                                                self.start_arg, self.end_arg)
                self.position_frames[_key].label['text'] = _string
        else:
            _string = "text.get('{}')".format(self.start_arg)
            self.position_frames['start'].label['text'] = _string


    def _select(self):
        self.text.focus_set()
        self.text.tag_remove('sel', '1.0', 'end')
        self.text.tag_add('sel', self.start_arg, self.end_arg)
        if self.end_arg:
            self.text.mark_set('insert', self.end_arg)
        else:
            self.text.mark_set('insert', self.start_arg)


class TextWithStats(tk.Text):
    """
    Text widget that stores stats of its content:
    self.line_count:        the total number of lines
    self.lines_length:      the total number of characters per line
    self.update_callback:   can be set as the reference to the callback
                            to be called with each update
    """

    def __init__(self, master, update_callback=None, *args, **kwargs):
        tk.Text.__init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs)
        self._events = ('<KeyPress>',
                        '<KeyRelease>',
                        '<ButtonRelease-1>',
                        '<ButtonRelease-2>',
                        '<ButtonRelease-3>',
                        '<Delete>',
                        '<<Cut>>',
                        '<<Paste>>',
                        '<<Undo>>',
                        '<<Redo>>')
        self.line_count = None
        self.lines_length = list()
        self.update_callback = update_callback
        self.update_stats()
        self.bind_events_on_widget_to_callback( self._events,
                                                self,
                                                self.update_stats)


    @staticmethod
    def bind_events_on_widget_to_callback(events, widget, callback):
        """
        Bind events on widget to callback.
        """

        for _event in events:
            widget.bind(_event, callback)


    def update_stats(self, event=None):
        """
        Update self.line_count, self.lines_length stats and call
        self.update_callback.
        """

        _string = self.get('1.0', 'end-1c')
        _string_lines = _string.splitlines()
        self.line_count = len(_string_lines)
        del self.lines_length[:]
        for _line in _string_lines:
            self.lines_length.append(len(_line))
        if self.update_callback:
            self.update_callback()


class PositionFrame(tk.LabelFrame):
    """
    A LabelFrame that has two LabelFrames which has Scales.
    """

    def __init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs):
        tk.LabelFrame.__init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs)
        self._create_widgets()
        self._layout()


    def _create_widgets(self):
        self.line = SliderFrame(self, orient='vertical', text="line=")
        self.column = SliderFrame(self, orient='horizontal', text="column=")
        self.label = tk.Label(self, text="Label")


    def _layout(self):
        self.line.grid(sticky='ns', row=0, column=0, rowspan=2)
        self.column.grid(sticky='ew', row=0, column=1, columnspan=2)
        self.label.grid(sticky='nsew', row=1, column=1)
        self.grid_rowconfigure(1, weight=1)
        self.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=1)


class SliderFrame(tk.LabelFrame):
    """
    A LabelFrame that encapsulates a Scale.
    """

    def __init__(self, master, orient, *args, **kwargs):
        tk.LabelFrame.__init__(self, master, *args, **kwargs)

        self.slider = tk.Scale(self, orient=orient)
        self.slider.pack(fill='both', expand=True)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    root = tk.Tk()
    demo = Demo(root, text="text.get(start, end=None)")

    with open(__file__) as f:
        demo.text.insert('1.0', f.read())
    demo.text.update_stats()
    demo.pack(fill='both', expand=True)
    root.mainloop()

I think this is a better way-

variable1=StringVar() # Value saved here

def search():
  print(variable1.get())
  return ''

ttk.Entry(mainframe, width=7, textvariable=variable1).grid(column=2, row=1)

ttk.Label(mainframe, text="label").grid(column=1, row=1)

ttk.Button(mainframe, text="Search", command=search).grid(column=2, row=13)

On pressing the button, the value in the text field would get printed. But make sure You import the ttk separately.

The full code for a basic application is-

from tkinter import *
from tkinter import ttk

root=Tk()
mainframe = ttk.Frame(root, padding="10 10 12 12")
mainframe.grid(column=0, row=0, sticky=(N, W, E, S))
mainframe.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
mainframe.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)


variable1=StringVar() # Value saved here

def search():
  print(variable1.get())
  return ''

ttk.Entry(mainframe, width=7, textvariable=variable1).grid(column=2, row=1)

ttk.Label(mainframe, text="label").grid(column=1, row=1)

ttk.Button(mainframe, text="Search", command=search).grid(column=2, row=13)

root.mainloop()

I faced the problem of gettng entire text from Text widget and following solution worked for me :

txt.get(1.0,END)

Where 1.0 means first line, zeroth character (ie before the first!) is the starting position and END is the ending position.

Thanks to Alan Gauld in this link

Lets say that you have a Text widget called my_text_widget.

To get input from the my_text_widget you can use the get function.

Let’s assume that you have imported tkinter. Lets define my_text_widget first, lets make it just a simple text widget.

my_text_widget = Text(self)

To get input from a text widget you need to use the get function, both, text and entry widgets have this.

input = my_text_widget.get()

The reason we save it to a variable is to use it in the further process, for example, testing for what’s the input.