Tkinter Global Binding

Question

Is it possible to bind all widgets to one command, with a single line? It would be nice if I could type in one line as opposed to doing each widget individually.

Answer 1

You would use the bind_all method on the root window. This will then apply to all widgets (unless you remove the bindtag "all" from some widgets). Note that these bindings fire last, so you can still override the application-wide binding on specific widgets if you wish.

Here's a contrived example:

import Tkinter as tk

class App:
    def __init__(self):
        root = tk.Tk()
        root.bind_all("<1>", self.woot)
        label1 = tk.Label(text="Label 1", name="label1")
        label2 = tk.Label(text="Label 2", name="label2")
        entry1 = tk.Entry(name="entry1")
        entry2 = tk.Entry(name="entry2")
        label1.pack()
        label2.pack()
        entry1.pack()
        entry2.pack()
        root.mainloop()

    def woot(self, event):
        print "woot!", event.widget

app=App()

You might also be interested in my answer to the question How to bind self events in Tkinter Text widget after it will binded by Text widget? where I talk a little more about bindtags.

Answer 2

If you have a list that contains all your widgets, you could iterate over them and assign the events.

Answer 3

You could also just define a function that calls on all your widgets, and call that function. Or better yet create a class that call on your widgets in init and import the class...

Answer 4

You mean something like this code which handles all mouse events handled with single function?

from Tkinter import *

class ButtonHandler:

    def __init__(self):      
        self.root = Tk()
        self.root.geometry('600x500+200+200')

        self.mousedown = False
        self.label = Label(self.root, text=str(self.mousedown))
        self.can = Canvas(self.root, width='500', height='400', bg='white')

        self.can.bind("<Motion>",lambda x:self.handler(x,'motion'))
        self.can.bind("<Button-1>",lambda x:self.handler(x,'press'))
        self.can.bind("<ButtonRelease-1>",lambda x:self.handler(x,'release'))
        self.label.pack()
        self.can.pack()
        self.root.mainloop()

    def handler(self,event,button_event):
        print('Handler %s' % button_event) 
        if button_event == 'press':
            self.mousedown = True
        elif button_event == 'release':
            self.mousedown = False
        elif button_event == 'motion':
            if self.mousedown:               
                r = 5
                self.can.create_oval(event.x-r, event.y-r, event.x+r, event.y+r, fill="orange")
        self.label.config(text=str(self.mousedown))

button_event = ButtonHandler()