Python Tkinter TTK Separator With Label

Question

I am trying to create a custom widget that includes a separator behind a label. I would like the separator to stretch out behind the label to each side of the window (using grid). I tried to create this myself, but I couldn't get the separator to stick to the edges.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk

class LabelSeparator (tk.Frame):
    def __init__ (self, parent, text = "", width = "", *args):
        tk.Frame.__init__ (self, parent, *args)

        self.separator = ttk.Separator (self, orient = tk.HORIZONTAL)
        self.separator.grid (row = 0, column = 0, sticky = "ew")

        self.label = ttk.Label (self, text = text)
        self.label.grid (row = 0, column = 0, padx = width)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    root = tk.Tk ()
    root.geometry ("200x40")

    label = LabelSeparator (root, text = "Label", width = 15)
    label.grid (sticky = "ew")

    label2 = LabelSeparator (root, text = "A Second Label", width = 15)
    label2.grid (sticky = "ew")

    root.mainloop ()

The only way I found to expand the separator was to increase the padx on the label, but that doesn't really fix the problem.

I should mention that I'm very new to creating custom widgets.

Answer 1

The only problem with your code is that you haven't called grid_columnconfigure to tell tkinter what to do with extra space. Since you didn't tell the inner frame what to do with extra space, it left it blank. When the widget is placed in its parent and expands, your inner widgets weren't using the extra space.

Add the following in your __init__:

self.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)

As a general rule of thumb, you always want to set the weight of at least one row and one column in a parent that uses grid to manage it's children.