Finding the currently selected tab of Ttk Notebook

Question

I have a Ttk Notebook widget containing 8 Frames - so, 8 tabs. Each frame contains a Text widget. I have a button outside the Notebook widget, and I want to insert text into the

Answer 1

There are two simple ways to see which tab is selected:

nb.select()  # returns the Tab NAME (string) of the current selection

and

nb.index('current') # returns the Tab INDEX (number) of the current selection

The .select() method can also be used to select which tab is currently active, via nb.select(tabId). Without the arg, it returns the tabId (in "name" form) of the current selection.

The .index(tabId) converts a tabId into a numerical index. It also can take the string "end" which will return the number of tabs. So, nb.index(tkinter.END) is like a len() method for a notebook widget.

When there are no tabs, .select() returns an empty string, but .index('current') throws an exception. So, if you want the index, I would say

if nb.select():
    idx = nb.index('current')

is the best way to go.

In your particular case, you would probably want to grab the current notebook tab name and then convert that name into the actual child text widget, via the nametowidget() method, for manipulation. So...

tabName = notebook.select()
if tabName:
    textWidget = notebook.nametowidget(tabName) # here, 'notebook' could be any widget
    textWidget.insert(pos, text, tags)

The nametowidget(name) method maps a Tkinter name to the actual widget. It is a method callable by any actual widget.