tkstart 1.0.3

Small starter kit for tkinter: clipboard, window helpers, styled widgets, project templates.

tkstart

A small starter kit for tkinter: clipboard helpers, window positioning, image loading, styled widget factories, colour utilities, validators, theme presets, and a tiny library of project templates that bootstrap a new tkinter project in one line.

Installation

pip install tkstart

That single command installs tkstart and its three runtime dependencies (Pillow, psycopg2-binary, pyperclip) so the bundled templates run straight out of the box. Tkinter itself ships with Python.

To uninstall:

pip uninstall tkstart

If you also want to drop the pulled-in libraries (only do this if no other project of yours needs them):

pip uninstall tkstart Pillow psycopg2-binary pyperclip

Quick start

import tkinter as tk
import tkstart

root = tk.Tk()
root.geometry("400x300")
tkstart.center(root)               # position window on the primary screen
tkstart.set_icon(root, "icon.ico") # silently no-op if file is missing

tkstart.title(root, "Hello").pack(pady=20)
tkstart.button(root, "OK", command=root.destroy, primary=True).pack()

root.mainloop()

Templates

The package bundles a few starter snippets and three ways to load them:

Way	Example	What happens
Side-effect import	import tkstart.a	SQL schema → clipboard
Side-effect import	import tkstart.b	CRUD app code → clipboard
Short alias	tkstart.sql()	SQL schema → clipboard
Short alias	tkstart.app()	CRUD app code → clipboard
Generic call	tkstart.copy_template("tk_login")	named template → clipboard
Save to file	tkstart.save_template("tk_minimal", "main.py")	written to disk

Available templates:

• crud_app — a tkinter CRUD application skeleton.
• sql_schema — a matching PostgreSQL schema for the CRUD demo.
• tk_minimal — minimal window with a button.
• tk_login — login-screen starter.

>>> import tkstart
>>> tkstart.templates()
['crud_app', 'sql_schema', 'tk_login', 'tk_minimal']
>>> tkstart.copy_template("crud_app")
True

API overview

tkstart.clipboard

Function	Purpose
copy(text)	Write text to the system clipboard.
paste()	Return current clipboard contents.
clear()	Empty the clipboard.
last_resort_path()	Path of the fallback file when all adapters fail.

Strategies tried in order: pyperclip → Windows API via ctypes → native CLI (clip.exe / pbcopy / xclip / xsel) → tkinter → file dump.

tkstart.window

Function	Purpose
center(window)	Position window in the centre of the primary screen.
maximize(window)	Maximize using the most reliable per-platform call.
toggle_fullscreen(window, state=None)	Toggle (or force) full-screen mode.
set_icon(window, path)	Set window icon from .ico / .png.

tkstart.images

Function	Purpose
load_image(path, size=None)	Return a tkinter PhotoImage.
thumbnail(path, max_size=(128,128))	Return a downscaled thumbnail.

tkstart.widgets

Function	Purpose
button(parent, text, ...)	Styled tk.Button.
title(parent, text)	Large-bold label.
separator(parent)	Horizontal divider.
labeled_entry(parent, label)	Row containing a label and an Entry.

tkstart.colors

Hex/RGB conversion plus lighten, darken, mix, luminance, is_dark, contrast_text.

tkstart.validation

Field validators returning None on success or an error string: required, min_length, max_length, is_email, is_phone, is_number, between.

tkstart.theme

A Theme dataclass plus LIGHT, DARK, SOFT presets. Use theme.apply(theme.DARK) to set the active theme.

tkstart.utils

Money formatting, date parsing, search-tolerant string helpers, file-name sanitisation.

Compatibility

• Python 3.8 — 3.12
• Windows, macOS, Linux

License

MIT