filedialog, tkinter and opening files

Question

I'm working for the first time on coding a Browse button for a program in Python3. I've been searching the internet and this site, and even python standard library.

I have found sample code and very superficial explanations of things, but I haven't been able to find anything that addresses the problem I'm having directly, or a good enough explanation so I can customize code to my needs.

Here is the relevant snippet:

Button(self, text = "Browse", command = self.load_file, width = 10)\         .grid(row = 1, column = 0, sticky = W) .....    def load_file(self):      filename = filedialog.askopenfilename(filetypes = (("Template files", "*.tplate")                                                          ,("HTML files", "*.html;*.htm")                                                          ,("All files", "*.*") ))     if filename:          try:              self.settings["template"].set(filename)         except:              messagebox.showerror("Open Source File", "Failed to read file \n'%s'"%filename)             return 

The method is a hybrid of some code I found along the way with my own customizations. It seems like I finally got it to work (kinda), though its not exactly how I need it.

I get this error when I activate the 'Browse' button: NameError: global name 'filedialog' is not defined.

I've found fairly similar issues along the way but all the solutions suggested I have covered. I went into the 'filedialog' help section of IDLE but didn't glean anything from there either.

Would someone mind providing a break down and a little guidance on this; none of my books address it specifically, and I've checked all the solutions provided to others—I'm lost.

Answer 1

The exception you get is telling you filedialog is not in your namespace. filedialog (and btw messagebox) is a tkinter module, so it is not imported just with from tkinter import *

>>> from tkinter import * >>> filedialog Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in <module> NameError: name 'filedialog' is not defined >>>  

you should use for example:

>>> from tkinter import filedialog >>> filedialog <module 'tkinter.filedialog' from 'C:\Python32\lib\tkinter\filedialog.py'> >>> 

or

>>> import tkinter.filedialog as fdialog 

or

>>> from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename 

So this would do for your browse button:

from tkinter import * from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename from tkinter.messagebox import showerror  class MyFrame(Frame):     def __init__(self):         Frame.__init__(self)         self.master.title("Example")         self.master.rowconfigure(5, weight=1)         self.master.columnconfigure(5, weight=1)         self.grid(sticky=W+E+N+S)          self.button = Button(self, text="Browse", command=self.load_file, width=10)         self.button.grid(row=1, column=0, sticky=W)      def load_file(self):         fname = askopenfilename(filetypes=(("Template files", "*.tplate"),                                            ("HTML files", "*.html;*.htm"),                                            ("All files", "*.*") ))         if fname:             try:                 print("""here it comes: self.settings["template"].set(fname)""")             except:                     # <- naked except is a bad idea                 showerror("Open Source File", "Failed to read file\n'%s'" % fname)             return   if __name__ == "__main__":     MyFrame().mainloop() 

Answer 2

I had to specify individual commands first and then use the * to bring all in command.

from tkinter import filedialog from tkinter import *