[Solved] How to get the text of Checkbuttons?

Question

Instead of overwriting the same variable, cb, try using an iterable type such as dictionary. You should also need to be attaching the value of Checkbutton to a tkinter variable class, such as BooleanVar, in order to easily track its status & value.

The code below produces a GUI that re-writes Text each time a Checkbutton is selected. It first populates a dictionary, cbs, with items from a list, cb_list, as keys and tk.Checkbutton objects as the values.

Checkbutton objects are so that each is attached to a special object, Tkinter Variable class, BooleanVar, which has a get method that returns the Checkbutton it is attached to’s current value when called. In this case, each Checkbutton holds True if checked, and False if unchecked as its value.

Each Checkbutton is also attached to a method, update_text, which is called when any of the Checkbutton is pressed. In that method for every Checkbutton in cbs, it first checks if the Checkbutton has True value, if so it appends its text to a _string. After this has been done for all Checkbuttons, the method then proceeds as first deleteing the entire text in the Text widget, then it puts _string to the Text.

The code:

import tkinter as tk


def update_text():
    global cbs
    _string = ''
    for name, checkbutton in cbs.items():
        if checkbutton.var.get():
            _string += checkbutton['text'] + '\n'
    text.delete('1.0', 'end')
    text.insert('1.0', _string)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    root = tk.Tk()
    text = tk.Text(root)

    cb_list =['pencil','pen','book','bag','watch','glasses','passport',
                                                'clothes','shoes','cap']
    cbs = dict()
    for i, value in enumerate(cb_list):
        cbs[value] = tk.Checkbutton(root, text=value, onvalue=True,
                                offvalue=False, command=update_text)
        cbs[value].var = tk.BooleanVar(root, value=False)
        cbs[value]['variable'] = cbs[value].var

        cbs[value].grid(row=i, column=0)

    text.grid()
    root.mainloop()

text is an option to Checkbutton widget, which means you can get its value using cget(widget.cget('option')) or simply widget['option'].

Accepted Answer