Tkinter – Create Menu from a List

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Create Menu from a List in Tkinter

In Tkinter, you can create menu items of a menu from a list by iterating over the given list, and adding each of the item in the list as a menu item in the menu.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a menu where the menu items are taken from a list, with examples.

Steps to create a Menu from a List in Tkinter

Step 1

Define a function that can be used for the callback function for the menu items.

def menu_item_action(arg):
    print(f'You clicked {arg}.')

Inside the callback function, we print the menu item on which the user clicked.

Step 2

Create a menu menu_1 in menu bar using Tk.Menu class.

menu_bar = tk.Menu(window)
menu_1 = tk.Menu(menu_bar, tearoff=False)

Step 3

Take a list of strings, that are considered for labels of menu items.

my_list = ['Item1', 'Item2', 'Item3', 'Item4']

Step 4

Use a Python For loop to iterate over the given list, and add a menu item for each of the item in the list.

for item_label in my_list:
    menu_1.add_command(label=item_label, command=lambda x=item_label:menu_item_action(x))

Step 5

Cascade menu menu_1 to the menu bar, and configure the Tk window with the menu bar.

Example

In this example, we shall create a menu menu_1 in the menu bar and populate the menu items from the elements of a list my_list.

When user clicks on a menu item, the callback function is called, and we print the label of the menu item, which the user clicked.

Program

import tkinter as tk

def menu_item_action(arg):
    print(f'You clicked {arg}.')

# Create the main window
window = tk.Tk()
window.title("PythonExamples.org")
window.geometry("300x200")

# Create the menu bar
menu_bar = tk.Menu(window)

# Create the menu
menu_1 = tk.Menu(menu_bar, tearoff=0)

my_list = ['Item1', 'Item2', 'Item3', 'Item4']

# Add items for Menu1
for item_label in my_list:
    menu_1.add_command(label=item_label, command=lambda x=item_label:menu_item_action(x))

# Add the menu to the menu bar
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Menu1", menu=menu_1)

# Attach the menu bar to the main window
window.config(menu=menu_bar)

# Start the Tkinter event loop
window.mainloop()

Output

Run on a MacOS.