python - How to embed a terminal in a Tkinter application?

Question

I want to embed a terminal in my main Tkinter window. I would like to have a sub window where a terminal (Bash based terminal) would run. I would like also to be able to let my program interact with the terminal, at least I would like to read the current working directory and/or set it.

I don't know if it is really impossible. I was able to do it in the past with Perl/Tk, so maybe it can be replicated here.

The code I used then was something like:

$frame3=$mw->Frame(-borderwidth=>2, -relief=>'groove', # -label=>'stuff for thought',
                             -labelBackground=>CADRAWWINCOLOR,-background=>CADRAWWINCOLOR);                 

$cv=$frame3->Canvas(-height=>$cvheight,-width=>$cvwidth,-background=>CADRAWWINCOLOR,
                             -bg => CADRAWWINCOLOR,
                             -relief => 'sunken')->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');

# this Frame is needed for including the xterm in Tk::Canvas 
my $xtermContainer = $cv->Frame(-container => 1);
my $xtid = $xtermContainer->id();
# converting the id from HEX to decimal as xterm requires a decimal Id
my ($xtId) = sprintf hex $xtid;

my $dcontitem = $cv->createWindow($xtermWidth/2,$xtermHeight/2,
                                       -window => $xtermContainer,
                                       -width => $xtermWidth,
                                       -height => $xtermHeight,
                                       -state => 'normal');

system("xterm -into $xtId -fn $fontname -geometry $geometry +sb -bg black -fg white -e ./xtermjob.pl $AAfname 5 &");

where $mw was the main Tk window.

Of course, I completely agree with Bryan: though I never programmed with a GUI library before, my program (rather large, a kind of wiki) is running very well, with a surprisingly low amount of code devoted to the GUI itself.

I tried translating this Perl code, but I'm stumbling on the ID problem.

The only place where I found some reference to a way to extract the ID from Tkinter is in Effbot, but when I use it, I get 'AttributeError: Frame instance has no attribute 'window_id', so there must be something wrong:

termf = Frame(root)
termf.pack(side=BOTTOM, fill=X)
id=termf.window_id()  
os.system("xterm -into %d -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--8-80-75-75-c-50-iso10646-1 -geometry 150x150+0+0 +sb -bg black -fg white -e /root/.bashrc &" % id);

You can embed vte in a pygtk app, but I don't know of a similar thing in tkinter. Any particular reason you are using tkinter? — Keith
just the fact that I found it easier to learn than other widgets! — alessandro
@Keith: why do you say pygtk has more of a future? Tkinter has been around a long time and is part of the python core. I don't see it being taken out of python for a very, very long time. — Bryan Oakley
@Keith: I think you are wrong with the "only get so far" comment. I've created some very complex, successful commercial apps based of of Tk (admittedly, with tcl/tk rather than python/tkinter). The fact is, many, many applications don't need anything Tkinter doesn't provide, especially when you consider the addition of the ttk widgets in the most recent versions of Tkinter. — Bryan Oakley
@Keith: you seem to imply that this is possible with pygtk. This question (stackoverflow.com/questions/5993390/…) asks how to do that in pygtk - could you answer it so we could see how to do it in your favorite toolkit? It's a tough problem to solve and I'd like to see how you do it in that toolkit. — Bryan Oakley

alessandro alessandro · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-07T09:47:26

I am happy to say that it is in fact possible to do it, and you can do it with just a few lines of code (I don't know if it is so easy with other toolkits):

from Tkinter import *
import os

root = Tk()
termf = Frame(root, height=400, width=500)

termf.pack(fill=BOTH, expand=YES)
wid = termf.winfo_id()
os.system('xterm -into %d -geometry 40x20 -sb &' % wid)

root.mainloop()

The problem before was to use the wrong function for wid.

python - How to embed a terminal in a Tkinter application?

2 Answers