Welcome, guest | Sign In | My Account | Store | Cart

This is a compound widget that gangs multiple Tk Listboxes to a single scrollbar to achieve a simple multi-column scrolled listbox. Most of the Listbox API is mirrored to make it act like the normal Listbox but with multiple values per row.

Python, 96 lines
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
from Tkinter import *

class MultiListbox(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master, lists):
	Frame.__init__(self, master)
	self.lists = []
	for l,w in lists:
	    frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
	    Label(frame, text=l, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
	    lb = Listbox(frame, width=w, borderwidth=0, selectborderwidth=0,
			 relief=FLAT, exportselection=FALSE)
	    lb.pack(expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
	    self.lists.append(lb)
	    lb.bind('<B1-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
	    lb.bind('<Button-1>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
	    lb.bind('<Leave>', lambda e: 'break')
	    lb.bind('<B2-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._b2motion(e.x, e.y))
	    lb.bind('<Button-2>', lambda e, s=self: s._button2(e.x, e.y))
	frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
	Label(frame, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
	sb = Scrollbar(frame, orient=VERTICAL, command=self._scroll)
	sb.pack(expand=YES, fill=Y)
	self.lists[0]['yscrollcommand']=sb.set

    def _select(self, y):
	row = self.lists[0].nearest(y)
	self.selection_clear(0, END)
	self.selection_set(row)
	return 'break'

    def _button2(self, x, y):
	for l in self.lists: l.scan_mark(x, y)
	return 'break'

    def _b2motion(self, x, y):
	for l in self.lists: l.scan_dragto(x, y)
	return 'break'

    def _scroll(self, *args):
	for l in self.lists:
	    apply(l.yview, args)

    def curselection(self):
	return self.lists[0].curselection()

    def delete(self, first, last=None):
	for l in self.lists:
	    l.delete(first, last)

    def get(self, first, last=None):
	result = []
	for l in self.lists:
	    result.append(l.get(first,last))
	if last: return apply(map, [None] + result)
	return result
	    
    def index(self, index):
	self.lists[0].index(index)

    def insert(self, index, *elements):
	for e in elements:
	    i = 0
	    for l in self.lists:
		l.insert(index, e[i])
		i = i + 1

    def size(self):
	return self.lists[0].size()

    def see(self, index):
	for l in self.lists:
	    l.see(index)

    def selection_anchor(self, index):
	for l in self.lists:
	    l.selection_anchor(index)

    def selection_clear(self, first, last=None):
	for l in self.lists:
	    l.selection_clear(first, last)

    def selection_includes(self, index):
	return self.lists[0].selection_includes(index)

    def selection_set(self, first, last=None):
	for l in self.lists:
	    l.selection_set(first, last)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    tk = Tk()
    Label(tk, text='MultiListbox').pack()
    mlb = MultiListbox(tk, (('Subject', 40), ('Sender', 20), ('Date', 10)))
    for i in range(1000):
	mlb.insert(END, ('Important Message: %d' % i, 'John Doe', '10/10/%04d' % (1900+i)))
    mlb.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)
    tk.mainloop()

The resulting widget is lightweight, fast, and very easy to use. The main limitation is that only text is supported which is a fundamental limitation of the Listbox.

In this implementation, only single-selection is allowed but it could be extended to multiple selection. User-resizeable columns and auto-sorting by clicking on the column label should also be possible.

Auto-scrolling while dragging Button-1 was disabled because this was breaks the synchronization between the lists. However, scrolling with Button-2 works fine.

2 comments

Christian Careaga 10 years, 2 months ago  # | flag

That's useful! nice!

Ken Carrier 9 years, 7 months ago  # | flag

Forgive me ignorance but how would you activate the buttons? I took your example into PyScritper and ran it but I only see the columns, no buttons. If was trying to get a button to return the results in a print statement. The longer goal of my project is to allow the user to select one row, get the values from that row and perform a query. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you for sharing your code.