Widget Events

Special events


In [ ]:
from __future__ import print_function

The ButtonWidget is not used to represent a data type. Instead the button widget is used to handle mouse clicks. The on_click method of the ButtonWidget can be used to register function to be called when the button is clicked. The doc string of the on_click can be seen below.


In [ ]:
from IPython.html import widgets
print(widgets.ButtonWidget.on_click.__doc__)

Example

Since button clicks are stateless, they are transmitted from the front-end to the back-end using custom messages. By using the on_click method, a button that prints a message when it has been clicked is shown below.


In [ ]:
from IPython.display import display
button = widgets.ButtonWidget(description="Click Me!")
display(button)

def on_button_clicked(b):
    print("Button clicked.")

button.on_click(on_button_clicked)

on_sumbit

The TextWidget also has a special on_submit event. The on_submit event fires when the user hits return.


In [ ]:
text = widgets.TextWidget()
display(text)

def handle_submit(sender):
    print(text.value)

text.on_submit(handle_submit)

Traitlet events

Widget properties are IPython traitlets and traitlets are eventful. To handle changes, the on_trait_change method of the widget can be used to register a callback. The doc string for on_trait_change can be seen below.


In [ ]:
print(widgets.Widget.on_trait_change.__doc__)

Signatures

Mentioned in the doc string, the callback registered can have 4 possible signatures:

  • callback()
  • callback(trait_name)
  • callback(trait_name, new_value)
  • callback(trait_name, old_value, new_value)

Using this method, an example of how to output an IntSliderWiget's value as it is changed can be seen below.


In [ ]:
int_range = widgets.IntSliderWidget()
display(int_range)

def on_value_change(name, value):
    print(value)

int_range.on_trait_change(on_value_change, 'value')