[Tkinter] How to create multilple tabs in tkinter from different classes

[CCChris91]

Answering this post may help others, so thanks for that. However I wonder if you looked at the post date of the original post, which was one year ago.

Most people (including myself) stumble upon these while browsing the internet for some answer to a problem they've encountered (to me it was about how to define the individual frames of a notepad as separate classes, and then a function definition that could replace tabs within the notepad by pressing a button, etc - this one did not help with that, but could still help others). So as long as there is no Tcl/tk 9 or Python 4 introduced that could render this code obsolete, it remains recent. Besides, 1 year is a relatively short time anyway.

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And if anyone's interested, i've figured out how to write multiple layers of frames, and define a controller function within the "root frames" to replace them (or the notebook tabs) via commands.

#!/usr/local/bin/python3
import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import *
from tkinter import ttk

# Root class to create the interface and define the controller function to switch frames
class RootApp(tk.Tk):
    def __init__(self):
        tk.Tk.__init__(self)
        self._frame = None
        self.switch_frame(NoteBook)

# controller function
    def switch_frame(self, frame_class):
        new_frame = frame_class(self)
        if self._frame is not None:
            self._frame.destroy()
        self._frame = new_frame
        self._frame.pack()

# sub-root to contain the Notebook frame and a controller function to switch the tabs within the notebook
class NoteBook(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.notebook = ttk.Notebook()
        self.tab1 = Tab1(self.notebook)
        self.tab2 = Tab2(self.notebook)
        self.tab3 = Tab3(self.notebook)
        self.notebook.add(self.tab1, text="Tab1")
        self.notebook.add(self.tab2, text="Tab2")
        self.notebook.add(self.tab3, text="Tab3")
        self.notebook.pack()

# controller function
    def switch_tab1(self, frame_class):
        new_frame = frame_class(self.notebook)
        self.tab1.destroy()
        self.tab1 = new_frame
        
# Notebook - Tab 1
class Tab1(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self._frame = None
        self.switch_frame(Tab1_Frame1)

    def switch_frame(self, frame_class):
        new_frame = frame_class(self)
        if self._frame is not None:
            self._frame.destroy()
        self._frame = new_frame
        self._frame.pack()

# first frame for Tab1
class Tab1_Frame1(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.label = Label(self, text="this is a test - one")
        # button object with command to replace the frame
        self.button = Button(self, text="Change it!", command=lambda: master.switch_frame(Tab1_Frame2))
        self.label.pack()
        self.button.pack()

# second frame for Tab1
class Tab1_Frame2(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.label = Label(self, text="it has been changed!")
        # and another button to change it back to the previous frame
        self.button = Button(self, text="Change it back!", command=lambda: master.switch_frame(Tab1_Frame1))
        self.label.pack()
        self.button.pack()

# Notebook - Tab 2
class Tab2(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.label = Label(self, text="this is a test - two")
        self.label.pack()

# Notebook - Tab 3
class Tab3(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        Frame.__init__(self, master)
        self.label = Label(self, text="this is a test - three")
        self.label.pack()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    Root = RootApp()
    Root.geometry("640x480")
    Root.title("Frame test")
    Root.mainloop()