Use asyncio and Tkinter (or another GUI lib) together without freezing the GUI

Question

I want to use asyncio in combination with a tkinter GUI. I am new to asyncio and my understanding of it is not very detailed. The example here starts 10 task when clicking on the first button. The task are just simulating work with a sleep() for some seconds.

The example code is running fine with Python 3.6.4rc1. But the problem is that the GUI is freezed. When I press the first button and start the 10 asyncio-tasks I am not able to press the second button in the GUI until all tasks are done. The GUI should never freeze - that is my goal.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from tkinter import *
from tkinter import messagebox
import asyncio
import random

def do_freezed():
    """ Button-Event-Handler to see if a button on GUI works. """
    messagebox.showinfo(message='Tkinter is reacting.')

def do_tasks():
    """ Button-Event-Handler starting the asyncio part. """
    loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
    try:
        loop.run_until_complete(do_urls())
    finally:
        loop.close()

async def one_url(url):
    """ One task. """
    sec = random.randint(1, 15)
    await asyncio.sleep(sec)
    return 'url: {}\tsec: {}'.format(url, sec)

async def do_urls():
    """ Creating and starting 10 tasks. """
    tasks = [
        one_url(url)
        for url in range(10)
    ]
    completed, pending = await asyncio.wait(tasks)
    results = [task.result() for task in completed]
    print('\n'.join(results))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    root = Tk()

    buttonT = Button(master=root, text='Asyncio Tasks', command=do_tasks)
    buttonT.pack()
    buttonX = Button(master=root, text='Freezed???', command=do_freezed)
    buttonX.pack()

    root.mainloop()

A _side problem

...is that I am not able to run the task a second time because of this error.

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/tkinter/__init__.py", line 1699, in __call__
    return self.func(*args)
  File "./tk_simple.py", line 17, in do_tasks
    loop.run_until_complete(do_urls())
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/base_events.py", line 443, in run_until_complete
    self._check_closed()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/asyncio/base_events.py", line 357, in _check_closed
    raise RuntimeError('Event loop is closed')
RuntimeError: Event loop is closed

Multithreading

Whould multithreading be a possible solution? Only two threads - each loop has it's own thread?

EDIT: After reviewing this question and the answers it is related to nearly all GUI libs (e.g. PygObject/Gtk, wxWidgets, Qt, ...).

Answer 1

In a slight modification to your code, I created the asyncio event_loop in the main thread and passed it as an argument to the asyncio thread. Now Tkinter won't freeze while the urls are fetched.

from tkinter import *
from tkinter import messagebox
import asyncio
import threading
import random

def _asyncio_thread(async_loop):
    async_loop.run_until_complete(do_urls())


def do_tasks(async_loop):
    """ Button-Event-Handler starting the asyncio part. """
    threading.Thread(target=_asyncio_thread, args=(async_loop,)).start()

    
async def one_url(url):
    """ One task. """
    sec = random.randint(1, 8)
    await asyncio.sleep(sec)
    return 'url: {}\tsec: {}'.format(url, sec)

async def do_urls():
    """ Creating and starting 10 tasks. """
    tasks = [one_url(url) for url in range(10)]
    completed, pending = await asyncio.wait(tasks)
    results = [task.result() for task in completed]
    print('\n'.join(results))


def do_freezed():
    messagebox.showinfo(message='Tkinter is reacting.')

def main(async_loop):
    root = Tk()
    Button(master=root, text='Asyncio Tasks', command= lambda:do_tasks(async_loop)).pack()
    Button(master=root, text='Freezed???', command=do_freezed).pack()
    root.mainloop()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    async_loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
    main(async_loop)

Answer 2

Trying to run both event loops at the same time is a dubious proposition. However, since root.mainloop simply calls root.update repeatedly, one can simulate mainloop by calling update repeatedly as an asyncio task. Here is a test program that does so. I presume adding asyncio tasks to the tkinter tasks would work. I checked that it still runs with 3.7.0a2.

"""Proof of concept: integrate tkinter, asyncio and async iterator.

Terry Jan Reedy, 2016 July 25
"""

import asyncio
from random import randrange as rr
import tkinter as tk


class App(tk.Tk):

    def __init__(self, loop, interval=1/120):
        super().__init__()
        self.loop = loop
        self.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", self.close)
        self.tasks = []
        self.tasks.append(loop.create_task(self.rotator(1/60, 2)))
        self.tasks.append(loop.create_task(self.updater(interval)))

    async def rotator(self, interval, d_per_tick):
        canvas = tk.Canvas(self, height=600, width=600)
        canvas.pack()
        deg = 0
        color = 'black'
        arc = canvas.create_arc(100, 100, 500, 500, style=tk.CHORD,
                                start=0, extent=deg, fill=color)
        while await asyncio.sleep(interval, True):
            deg, color = deg_color(deg, d_per_tick, color)
            canvas.itemconfigure(arc, extent=deg, fill=color)

    async def updater(self, interval):
        while True:
            self.update()
            await asyncio.sleep(interval)

    def close(self):
        for task in self.tasks:
            task.cancel()
        self.loop.stop()
        self.destroy()


def deg_color(deg, d_per_tick, color):
    deg += d_per_tick
    if 360 <= deg:
        deg %= 360
        color = '#%02x%02x%02x' % (rr(0, 256), rr(0, 256), rr(0, 256))
    return deg, color

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
app = App(loop)
loop.run_forever()
loop.close()

Both the tk update overhead and time resolution increase as the interval is decreased. For gui updates, as opposed to animations, 20 per second may be enough.

I recently succeeded in running async def coroutines containing tkinter calls and awaits with mainloop. The prototype uses asyncio Tasks and Futures, but I don't know if adding normal asyncio tasks would work. If one wants to run asyncio and tkinter tasks together, I think running tk update with an asyncio loop is a better idea.

EDIT: A least as used above, exception without async def coroutines kill the coroutine but are somewhere caught and discarded. Silent error are pretty obnoxious.