Tkinter only lets you use 1 button at a time? - python-3.x

Question

so im making a gui miner for a coin called duinocoin, very new to tkinter.
So i integrated mining into a function, so when you press a button it mines. The problem is when I click mine I cant click anyother buttons because its in that mining loop. How do I fix this?
-Eth guy

Answer 1

Using threading, to create a separate thread from the UI thread:
from tkinter import *
from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
root = Tk()
def run(): #the loop function
b1.config(command=Thread(target=run).start) #or b1.config(state=DISABLED)
while True:
print('Hey')
sleep(2) #pause for 2 seconds.
def step(): #the in between function
print('This is being printed in between the other loop')
b1 = Button(root,text='Loop',command=Thread(target=run).start)
b1.pack()
b2 = Button(root,text='Separate function',command=step)
b2.pack()
root.mainloop()
Take a look at this example, first run the loop button, then press the next button and you will notice, it gets executed in between the while loop. But sleep() might still freeze your GUI out.
Explanation:
Threading is nothing much, just like a normal thread, imagine cars going through a thread and they got into accident, so the thread might break, just like that, your tkinter runs on one thread and your while loop runs with it causing the thread to freeze, but with threading you make a new thread for that function with while and hence the thread with tkinter is going smooth, while the thread with while loop is frozen, and it doesnt matter for the other thread.
Alternatively you could also use after() for this purpose, like:
from tkinter import *
from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
root = Tk()
def run():
global rep
print('Hey')
rep = root.after(2000,run) #run the same function every 2 seconds
def stop():
root.after_cancel(rep)
def step():
print('This is being printed in between the other loop')
b1 = Button(root,text='Loop',command=run)
b1.pack()
b2 = Button(root,text='Seperate function',command=step)
b2.pack()
b3 = Button(root,text='Stop loop',command=stop)
b3.pack()
root.mainloop()
Here when you press the loop button, it will start to loop, when you press the separate button, it prints a function in between the pseudo loop and when you press stop, it stops the loop.
after() method takes two arguments mainly:
ms - time to be run the function
func - the function to run after the given ms is finished.
after_cancel() takes the variable name of after() only.
Hopefully, you understood better, do let me know if you have any doubts or errors.
Cheers