tkxterm 1.0.0

Use XTerm embedded in a Tkinter frame, passing to it strings and commands and receving the exit code of the commands

TkXTerm - XTerm in Tkinter

TkXTerm makes available a Terminal Ttk frame, that have XTerm embedded and it can be used in the Tkinter GUI as a normal frame. It's possible to send any commands to execute it, having back in the code an object that, after the end of the command, contains the exit code and can execute a callback. It's also possible to use XTerm normally.

This project is born with the purpose of having an embedded and fully functional bash terminal in a Tkinter GUI, to interact with it and run some commands automatically, viewing in real-time the output and the results and having the exit code back into an object in the code.

Installation

TkXTerm can be installed from PyPI using the command pip install tkxterm. Besides Tkinter, it has XTerm and screen (a GNU software, generally preinstalled in all Linux system) as dependecies. Make sure you have both installed before trying to use this library. Because of these dependencies, this library is available only for Linux system.

Usage

Terminal

TkXTerm makes available the Terminal Ttk frame, so all the Ttk Frame options are available. In addition, it can accept the following options:

• restore_on_close, which enables automatic restart of the terminal when it is closed (e.g. by accidentally pressing Ctrl-D);
• read_interval_ms, which specifies how many milliseconds should pass between each reading of the terminal to retrieve exit codes (this is also a property that can be set);
• read_length, which specifies how many bytes to 1ead in each interval (this is also a property that can be set).

It has also its methods to interact with the terminal:

• run_command is the resposible for run any command you want on the terminal. To execute a command in background, use the background argument rather than using the classic & method, because otherwise the exit code indicates only if the command started correctly or not, and not the actual exit code of the command runned in background. You can also specify a callback that will be called immediatly after the command is terminated, this callback receive the Command object as argument.
• send_string is the function for the actual sending any string to the terminal, and stores it if the terminal is not ready. With this you can send any string at any moment to the terminal.
• restart_term is the procedure for reboot the terminal if it is closed.

Furthermore, it have the properties ready, that indicates if the terminal is ready or not, and end_string, that returns the string appended at the end of any command executed.

Terminal generates also some events: when the terminal is ready or no more ready, it generates <<TerminalReady>> and <<TerminalClosed>>; when a command finishes it generates <<CommandEnded>> with the referiment to the Command object, while when a string is sent to the terminal, it generates <<StringSent>> with the referiment to the string itself.

Command

The run_command method returns an instance of the Command class, that hold the command string in the cmd property, the exit code of itself in the exit_code property, and the callback in the callback property.