Tkinter.grid spacing options?

Question

I'm new to Tkinter, and I tried creating an app with the grid layout manager. However, I can't seem to find a way to utilize it the way I want to. What I need to do is simulate a grid full of 'cells' so that I can place, for example, a label in cell (3,8) or a button in cell (5,1). Here is an example of what I've tried:

import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()

label = tk.Label(root, text = 'Label')
label.grid(column = 3, row = 8)

button = tk.Button(root, text = 'Button')
button.grid(column = 5, row = 1)

Tkinter keeps the relative position of each widget (i.e. button is above and to the right of label), but it ignores any space in between. I've searched a bit for this problem and found out about weight, but that doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for; I'd like something independent of the label and button's layouts. Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

You can specify the spacing on columns/rows in the grid (including those that contain no widget) by running the grid_columnconfigure and grid_rowconfigure methods on the parent of the widgets (in this case, the parent would be root).

For example, to set a minimum width for the 4th column, add the last line to your code:

import Tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()

label = tk.Label(root, text = 'Label')
label.grid(column = 3, row = 8)

button = tk.Button(root, text = 'Button')
button.grid(column = 5, row = 1)

root.grid_columnconfigure(4, minsize=100)  # Here

If you want to set a minimum size for all of your columns and rows, you can iterate through them all using:

col_count, row_count = root.grid_size()

for col in xrange(col_count):
    root.grid_columnconfigure(col, minsize=20)

for row in xrange(row_count):
    root.grid_rowconfigure(row, minsize=20)

Edit Interestingly, effbot states:

minsize=Defines the minimum size for the row. Note that if a row is completely empty, it will not be displayed, even if this option is set.

(italics mine) but it seems to work even for rows and columns that are empty, as far as I've tried.

Answer 2

By default, a row is of height zero and a column is of width zero. So, rows and columns that don't have anything in them will be invisible and take up no space.