Building a Simple Text Editor with Python’s Tkinter

Creating a text editor is a great way to practice Python programming, especially using the Tkinter library. In this post, we'll walk through the process of building a simple text editor that includes features like opening, saving, and creating new files, as well as text editing functionalities. We'll break down the code into manageable snippets and explain the logic behind each part.

For the complete code and project details, visit GitHub.

Code Snippets and Explanations:

Let's dive into the key components of our text editor.

Setting Up the Basic Window:

First, we need to set up the main window for our text editor. This involves importing necessary modules and configuring the Tkinter window.

import os
from tkinter import *
from tkinter import filedialog, colorchooser, font
from tkinter.messagebox import *

window = Tk()
window.title("Text Editor")
window.geometry("500x500")

textArea = Text(window, font=("Arial", 12))
textArea.pack(expand=True, fill=BOTH)

menuBar = Menu(window)
window.config(menu=menuBar)

Here, we create the main window, set its title and dimensions, and add a Text widget for our text area. We also configure a menu bar that will hold various menu options.

Adding File Menu Functions:

Next, we add functionalities for creating new files, opening existing files, and saving files. These functions interact with the textArea widget and use the filedialog module to handle file operations.

def newFile():
    window.title("Untitled")
    textArea.delete(1.0, END)

def openFile():
    file = filedialog.askopenfilename(defaultextension=".txt", filetypes=[('All Files', '*.*'), ("Text Documents", '*.txt')])
    if file:
        window.title(os.path.basename(file))
        textArea.delete(1.0, END)
        with open(file, 'r') as fileContent:
            textArea.insert(1.0, fileContent.read())

def saveFile():
    file = filedialog.asksaveasfilename(defaultextension=".txt", filetypes=[('All Files', '*.*'), ('Text Documents', '*.txt')])
    if file:
        window.title(os.path.basename(file))
        with open(file, 'w') as fileContent:
            fileContent.write(textArea.get(1.0, END))

These functions use the filedialog module to prompt the user to select a file or specify a filename, then read from or write to the selected file.

Adding Edit Menu Functions:

We also add basic text editing functionalities like cut, copy, and paste.

def cut():
    textArea.event_generate("<<Cut>>")

def copy():
    textArea.event_generate("<<Copy>>")

def paste():
    textArea.event_generate("<<Paste>>")

These functions use Tkinter's event_generate method to perform cut, copy, and paste operations.

Adding Font and Color Customization:

To enhance our text editor, we can allow users to change the font and color of the text.

def changeColor():
    color = colorchooser.askcolor()
    textArea.configure(fg=color[1])

def changeFont(*args):
    textArea.config(font=(fontName.get(), fontSize.get()))

fontName = StringVar(window)
fontName.set("Arial")
fontSize = StringVar(window)
fontSize.set("12")

fontBox = OptionMenu(window, fontName, *font.families(), command=changeFont)
fontBox.pack()

sizeBox = Spinbox(window, from_=1, to=100, textvariable=fontSize, command=changeFont)
sizeBox.pack()

colorButton = Button(window, text="Color", command=changeColor)
colorButton.pack()

Here, we use OptionMenu and Spinbox widgets to let users select different fonts and font sizes, and a Button to change the text color using colorchooser.

Adding Menus to the Menu Bar:

Finally, we add our functions to the menu bar.

fileMenu = Menu(menuBar, tearoff=0)
menuBar.add_cascade(label='File', menu=fileMenu)
fileMenu.add_command(label='New', command=newFile)
fileMenu.add_command(label='Open', command=openFile)
fileMenu.add_command(label='Save', command=saveFile)
fileMenu.add_separator()
fileMenu.add_command(label='Exit', command=window.quit)

editMenu = Menu(menuBar, tearoff=0)
menuBar.add_cascade(label='Edit', menu=editMenu)
editMenu.add_command(label='Cut', command=cut)
editMenu.add_command(label='Copy', command=copy)
editMenu.add_command(label='Paste', command=paste)

formatMenu = Menu(menuBar, tearoff=0)
menuBar.add_cascade(label='Format', menu=formatMenu)
formatMenu.add_command(label='Color', command=changeColor)

helpMenu = Menu(menuBar, tearoff=0)
menuBar.add_cascade(label='Help', menu=helpMenu)
helpMenu.add_command(label='About', command=lambda: showinfo("About", "A simple text editor made with Tkinter"))

This adds the File, Edit, Format, and Help menus to our menu bar and links them to their respective functions.

Conclusion:

With these snippets and explanations, you should have a good understanding of how to build a simple text editor using Python's Tkinter library. This text editor includes basic functionalities like creating, opening, and saving files, as well as text editing and customization features. Happy coding!