Tkinter multiple Radiobutton groups

Question

I'm trying to create a settings window, with multiple groups of TkInter Radiobuttons. They should modify a text variable that I can work with later on.

I have the following code:

# radiobutton group 1
settingSort = ""
settingSortRadio1 = tkinter.Radiobutton(settingsWindow, text="Frequency", variable=settingSort, value="freq")
settingSortRadio1.select()
settingSortRadio1.pack()
settingSortRadio2 = tkinter.Radiobutton(settingsWindow, text="Alphabetical", variable=settingSort, value="alpha")
settingSortRadio2.pack()

#radiobutton group 2
settingAnalyseRadio1 = tkinter.Radiobutton(settingsWindow, text="Word frequency", variable=settingAnalyse, value="wfreq")
settingAnalyseRadio1.select()
settingAnalyseRadio1.pack()
settingAnalyseRadio2 = tkinter.Radiobutton(settingsWindow, text="Letter frequency", variable=settingAnalyse, value="lfreq")
settingAnalyseRadio2.pack()

However, these buttons all seem to be part of the same group still. Selecting a button in group 1 will deselect all others in the window (including in group 2), and vice versa.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

This is because you're not using the in built variable classes from tkinter.

You need to do something like the below:

from tkinter import *

root = Tk()

var1 = StringVar()
var2 = StringVar()

var1.set(0)
var2.set(0)

Radiobutton(root, text = "group1", variable = var1, value = 0).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group1", variable = var1, value = 1).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group2", variable = var2, value = 0).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group2", variable = var2, value = 1).pack()

root.mainloop()

Let's break this down to make it easier to understand.

var1 = StringVar()
var2 = StringVar()

So above we create two StringVar() variables. As far as you need to be concerned these are just "containers" which store the value of specific widgets within themselves. We create two because we have two different groups of Radiobutton widgets.

var1.set(0)
var2.set(0)

Above we set the value of the StringVar() variables to be the same as the values of the first Radiobutton widgets of each group (which we're about to initialise). This means that when the Radiobuttons are drawn, the first one in each group will start selected by default.

Radiobutton(root, text = "group1", variable = var1, value = 0).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group1", variable = var1, value = 1).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group2", variable = var2, value = 0).pack()
Radiobutton(root, text = "group2", variable = var2, value = 1).pack()

In the above we initialise the Radiobutton widgets. We use the variable attribute of each Radiobutton to assign the variable class associated with each group (var1 for group 1 and var2 for group 2) and then we use the value attribute to assign the value that the Radiobuttons should "store" in their associated variables.

This allows us to create 4 Radiobuttons in 2 "groups" which can update two variables independent of the other "group".

Answer 2

That does not work because you need to use a variable class instead of what you did.

I mean, you need to change this line:

settingSort = ""

to:

settingSort = tkinter.StringVar()

Then you need to initialize settingSort according to your specific need.