Widget Events

Special events

from __future__ import print_function

The Button is not used to represent a data type. Instead the button widget is used to handle mouse clicks. The on_click method of the Button 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.

import ipywidgets as widgets
print(widgets.Button.on_click.__doc__)

Register a callback to execute when the button is clicked.

        The callback will be called with one argument, the clicked button
        widget instance.

        Parameters
        ----------
        remove: bool (optional)
            Set to true to remove the callback from the list of callbacks.

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.

from IPython.display import display
button = widgets.Button(description="Click Me!")
display(button)

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

button.on_click(on_button_clicked)

on_submit

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

text = widgets.Text()
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 observe method of the widget can be used to register a callback. The doc string for observe can be seen below.

print(widgets.Widget.observe.__doc__)

Setup a handler to be called when a trait changes.

        This is used to setup dynamic notifications of trait changes.

        Parameters
        ----------
        handler : callable
            A callable that is called when a trait changes. Its
            signature should be ``handler(change)``, where ``change`` is a
            dictionary. The change dictionary at least holds a 'type' key.
            * ``type``: the type of notification.
            Other keys may be passed depending on the value of 'type'. In the
            case where type is 'change', we also have the following keys:
            * ``owner`` : the HasTraits instance
            * ``old`` : the old value of the modified trait attribute
            * ``new`` : the new value of the modified trait attribute
            * ``name`` : the name of the modified trait attribute.
        names : list, str, All
            If names is All, the handler will apply to all traits.  If a list
            of str, handler will apply to all names in the list.  If a
            str, the handler will apply just to that name.
        type : str, All (default: 'change')
            The type of notification to filter by. If equal to All, then all
            notifications are passed to the observe handler.

Signatures

Mentioned in the doc string, the callback registered must have the signature handler(change) where change is a dictionary holding the information about the change.

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

int_range = widgets.IntSlider()
display(int_range)

def on_value_change(change):
    print(change['new'])

int_range.observe(on_value_change, names='value')

Linking Widgets

Often, you may want to simply link widget attributes together. Synchronization of attributes can be done in a simpler way than by using bare traitlets events.

Linking traitlets attributes in the kernel

The first method is to use the link and dlink functions from the traitlets module. This only works if we are interacting with a live kernel.

import traitlets

caption = widgets.Label(value = 'The values of slider1 and slider2 are synchronized')
sliders1, slider2 = widgets.IntSlider(description='Slider 1'),\
                             widgets.IntSlider(description='Slider 2')
l = traitlets.link((sliders1, 'value'), (slider2, 'value'))
display(caption, sliders1, slider2)

caption = widgets.Label(value = 'Changes in source values are reflected in target1')
source, target1 = widgets.IntSlider(description='Source'),\
                           widgets.IntSlider(description='Target 1')
dl = traitlets.dlink((source, 'value'), (target1, 'value'))
display(caption, source, target1)

Function traitlets.link and traitlets.dlink return a Link or DLink object. The link can be broken by calling the unlink method.

l.unlink()
dl.unlink()

Linking widgets attributes from the client side

When synchronizing traitlets attributes, you may experience a lag because of the latency due to the roundtrip to the server side. You can also directly link widget attributes in the browser using the link widgets, in either a unidirectional or a bidirectional fashion.

Javascript links persist when embedding widgets in html web pages without a kernel.

caption = widgets.Label(value = 'The values of range1 and range2 are synchronized')
range1, range2 = widgets.IntSlider(description='Range 1'),\
                         widgets.IntSlider(description='Range 2')
l = widgets.jslink((range1, 'value'), (range2, 'value'))
display(caption, range1, range2)

caption = widgets.Label(value = 'Changes in source_range values are reflected in target_range1')
source_range, target_range1 = widgets.IntSlider(description='Source range'),\
                                             widgets.IntSlider(description='Target range 1')
dl = widgets.jsdlink((source_range, 'value'), (target_range1, 'value'))
display(caption, source_range, target_range1)

Function widgets.jslink returns a Link widget. The link can be broken by calling the unlink method.

# l.unlink()
# dl.unlink()