tkwry 0.0.2

Keep Tkinter — embed a real system WebView in your Frame (wry, child-window embedding)

tkwry

Keep Tkinter — give it the WebView it never had.

Embed a real system WebView (wry) inside your Frame: modern HTML, JS, and IPC in the same layout as your buttons and tabs — one mainloop, no floating overlay.

Alpha — Early preview (see PyPI badge for the current version). APIs and behavior may change without notice. Not recommended for production use yet.

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📖 Overview

Tkinter is still a solid GUI shell — it just had no first-class way to host modern web content inside a widget. Overlay-style WebViews drift out of sync when you move, resize, or switch tabs.

tkwry fills that missing piece:

• True child embedding — build_as_child via HWND, NSView, or X11 window ID
• One event loop — Tk mainloop only; no separate app runtime
• IPC bridge — JavaScript → Python callbacks without freezing the UI
• Layout-aware — tracks pack / grid / place, tabs, and PanedWindow

Pre-built abi3 wheels ship for Windows (x86_64) and macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel). Linux is supported via source install (sdist / git) — PyPI wheels for Linux are intentionally not published.

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🔧 Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• Tkinter (included with most Python builds)
• Windows (x86_64 only)
  • WebView2 Runtime must be installed (pre-installed on many Windows 10/11 systems).
  • Without WebView2, tkwry is not supported on Windows — there is no fallback engine.
• macOS — 11 (Big Sur) or later; Apple Silicon (arm64) or Intel (x86_64); system WKWebView (no extra runtime)
• Linux — WebKitGTK 4.1 + GTK 3 dev packages; X11 or XWayland ($DISPLAY); build the extension from source (see below)

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📦 Installation

Install from PyPI (Windows / macOS wheels):

pip install tkwry

Developing or running examples from a git clone — use an editable install so Python picks up this repo (not an older copy in site-packages):

pip install -e .

Or install from GitHub for the latest changes:

pip install git+https://github.com/mashu3/tkwry.git

Linux (source install)

Linux is fully supported, but only as a source build — not via a PyPI wheel. Install system dependencies, then:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  libgtk-3-dev \
  libglib2.0-dev

# Runtime (for end users of your app)
# sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libgtk-3-0

pip install maturin
git clone https://github.com/mashu3/tkwry.git
cd tkwry
pip install .

GTK events are pumped automatically on a Tk timer while your app runs.

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🚀 Usage

Basic WebView

import tkinter as tk
from tkwry import WebView

root = tk.Tk()
root.geometry("900x600")

frame = tk.Frame(root, bg="#222")
frame.pack(fill="both", expand=True, padx=8, pady=8)

web = WebView(frame, url="https://github.com")

root.mainloop()

IPC (JavaScript → Python)

def on_message(msg: str) -> None:
    print("from JS:", msg)

web = WebView(
    frame,
    html='<button onclick="window.ipc.postMessage(\'hi\')">send</button>',
    ipc_handler=on_message,
)

Load HTML / evaluate JavaScript

web.load_html("<h1>Hello</h1>")
web.eval_js("document.title = 'Hi'")
web.eval_js_with_callback("document.title", print)
web.load_url("https://example.com")
web.reload()
print(web.url)
web.focus()
web.open_devtools()

Navigation / lifecycle callbacks

from tkwry import NewWindowResponse, PageLoadEvent

web = WebView(
    frame,
    url="https://example.com",
    on_page_load=lambda evt, url: print(evt, url),
    on_title_changed=lambda title: root.title(title),
    on_navigation=lambda url: url.startswith("https://"),
    on_new_window=lambda url: NewWindowResponse.Deny,
)

Drag & drop (native OS path)

File drops from Finder / Explorer are handled by the OS WebView. Your handler runs on the Tk main thread (tkwry queues events from WebKit automatically).

from tkwry import DragDropEvent

def on_drop(event, paths, position):
    if event == DragDropEvent.Drop:
        print("files:", paths)

web = WebView(frame, html="...", drag_drop_handler=on_drop)

See examples/dnd_demo.py.

Cleanup

web.destroy()   # release native webview; host Frame is kept
# or destroy the host Frame — both tear down the webview

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📚 API summary

Category	Members
Content	load_url, load_html, reload, url
JavaScript	eval_js, eval_js_with_callback
IPC	set_ipc_handler
Callbacks	set_on_navigation, set_on_page_load, set_on_title_changed, set_on_new_window, set_drag_drop_handler
Appearance	set_background_color, focus, focus_parent, open_devtools, close_devtools, is_devtools_open
Layout	pack, grid, place (delegate to host Frame)
Lifecycle	destroy, destroyed, native

Constructor options: url, html, ipc_handler, devtools, background_color, user_agent, initialization_script, focused, plus the callback hooks above.

Enums: PageLoadEvent, NewWindowResponse, DragDropEvent.

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⚠️ Known limitations

• Alpha — APIs may change; not recommended for production yet
• Windows — WebView2 Runtime required; systems without it are unsupported
• Linux — no pre-built PyPI wheel (source install only; this is intentional)
• DevTools — macOS uses private APIs; avoid in Mac App Store release builds
• macOS input — keyboard focus is shared between Tk and the WebView on the main thread; typing may feel slightly less snappy than a standalone browser (especially with IME on)
• Drag & drop — drop target is the WebView area only (not arbitrary Tk widgets; use tkinterdnd2 for those)

See CHANGELOG.md for release history.

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🌐 Platform notes

OS	Arch	Parent handle	Engine	Notes
Windows	x86_64	Frame.winfo_id() → HWND	WebView2	WebView2 Runtime required
macOS	arm64, x86_64	Toplevel content NSView	WKWebView	See macOS embedding below
Linux	—	winfo_id() → X11 window ID	WebKitGTK	GTK pumped on a Tk timer; source install

macOS embedding

On macOS, Tk child Frames usually do not get their own NSView — that is a property of the Tk Aqua backend, not something tkwry can turn into per-frame native views without upstream Tk changes.

tkwry works around this by:

1. Attaching the WebView to the toplevel content view
2. Positioning it with set_bounds to match your Frame (<Configure>)
3. Hiding it with set_visible(False) when the frame is unmapped (<Unmap>) — e.g. another ttk.Notebook tab is selected

Keyboard focus (macOS): Rust routes clicks between Tk widgets and the WebView. You may notice slight input latency compared to a normal browser; v0.0.1 treats this as a known limitation.

You do not need extra code for tabs or panes — see examples/multi_demo.py. IPC, page-load, title, eval, and drag-and-drop handlers are dispatched on the Tk main thread via an internal queue (avoids WebKit deadlocks).

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💡 Why child-window embedding?

Tkinter apps already have a window and a layout. The web belongs inside a Frame — same mainloop, same tabs and panes — not in a separate top-level webview that floats beside your UI. tkwry wraps wry's build_as_child against the native surface Tk gives your widgets.

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🧩 Features

• Child-window embedding — WebView is a native child of your Tk window surface, not a floating overlay
• Bounds & visibility sync — follows <Configure>, <Map>, and <Unmap> (tabs / Notebook work out of the box on macOS)
• Deferred callbacks — IPC, page load, title, eval results, and DnD queue to Tk (avoids macOS deadlocks)
• URL safety — normalizes and validates URLs before navigation
• DevTools — open_devtools() / devtools=True for debugging
• Native drag & drop — OS-level file drops into the WebView (no tkinterdnd2)
• Navigation hooks — on_navigation, on_page_load, on_title_changed, on_new_window
• Multiple layouts — works with pack, grid, place, Notebook, and PanedWindow (see examples)
• Plotly-ready — load HTML + eval_js for interactive charts
• Alpha, but tested — CI on Ubuntu (Xvfb + WebKitGTK), Windows, and macOS

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📁 Examples

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

Script	Description
examples/url_demo.py	URL bar + embedded page
examples/ipc_demo.py	JavaScript ↔ Tkinter IPC
examples/multi_demo.py	Multiple WebViews, tabs, panes
examples/plotly_demo.py	Plotly charts (pip install plotly)
examples/dnd_demo.py	Native file drag & drop into WebView

python examples/url_demo.py
python examples/ipc_demo.py
python examples/multi_demo.py
python examples/plotly_demo.py
python examples/dnd_demo.py

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📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

This project links against wry, which is dual-licensed (Apache-2.0 or MIT). tkwry uses wry under MIT; see NOTICE for attribution.

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👨‍💻 Author

mashu3