How to add radiobuttons to a submenu in Tkinter

Question

I want to have a set of two radiobuttons "BBC" and "CNN" in a submenu named "Channel" in my GUI. I tried to use the add_radiobutton method, but the radiobuttons appear under the submenu, while I want them to behave as attributes for the "Channel" submenu, rather than additional submenus of the "News" menu.

from tkinter import *


root = Tk()
root.title("main")
root.geometry("500x500")


MAIN_MENU = Menu(root)
root.config(menu=MAIN_MENU)

File_menu = Menu(MAIN_MENU, tearoff=0)
MAIN_MENU.add_cascade(label="News", menu=File_menu, underline=0)
File_menu.add_command(label="Channel")

File_menu.add_radiobutton(label="BBC")
File_menu.add_radiobutton(label="CNN")

Settings_menu = Menu(MAIN_MENU, tearoff=0)
MAIN_MENU.add_cascade(label="History", menu=Settings_menu, underline=3)

root.mainloop()

Answer 1

You must make a submenu first, add the radiobuttons to it, and then add it as a cascade to your main menu. Then, add that menu to your menu bar.

menuBar = tk.Menu(root)
menu1 = tk.Menu(root)
submenu = tk.Menu(root)
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 1")
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 2")

menuBar.add_cascade(label="Menu 1", menu=menu1)
menu1.add_cascade(label="Subemnu with radio buttons", menu=submenu)

Full working example:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

menuBar = tk.Menu(root)
menu1 = tk.Menu(root)
submenu = tk.Menu(root)
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 1")
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 2")

menuBar.add_cascade(label="Menu 1", menu=menu1)
menu1.add_cascade(label="Subemnu with radio buttons", menu=submenu)

root.config(menu=menuBar)
root.mainloop()

You'll probably want to add some attributes to your radiobuttons. A more complete form would be:

add_radiobutton(label="Option 1", value=1, variable=optionVar, command=on_option_1)

Where:

• label is the text that appears in the menu;
• variable is a tk.Variable instance, generally an IntVar or a StringVar;
• value is the value to set to variable when the option is selected;
• command is the callback to be run when the option is selected.

Answer 2

You must make a submenu first, add the radiobuttons to it, and then add it as a cascade to your main menu. Then, add that menu to your menu bar.

menuBar = tk.Menu(root)
menu1 = tk.Menu(root)
submenu = tk.Menu(root)
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 1")
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 2")

menuBar.add_cascade(label="Menu 1", menu=menu1)
menu1.add_cascade(label="Subemnu with radio buttons", menu=submenu)

Full working example:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

menuBar = tk.Menu(root)
menu1 = tk.Menu(root)
submenu = tk.Menu(root)
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 1")
submenu.add_radiobutton(label="Option 2")

menuBar.add_cascade(label="Menu 1", menu=menu1)
menu1.add_cascade(label="Subemnu with radio buttons", menu=submenu)

root.config(menu=menuBar)
root.mainloop()

You'll probably want to add some attributes to your radiobuttons. A more complete form would be:

add_radiobutton(label="Option 1", value=1, variable=optionVar, command=on_option_1)

Where:

• label is the text that appears in the menu;
• variable is a tk.Variable instance, generally an IntVar or a StringVar;
• value is the value to set to variable when the option is selected;
• command is the callback to be run when the option is selected.