Arcpy scripts run time dialog keeps deactivating tkinter window

Question

I'm using tkinter in my scripts to get field names of the user in case the hard coded field names were not found in the target feature.

it runs from python IDE, but when run from arcmaps toolbox the interface keeps refreshing making it impossible to focus on the input message box generated from the script.

Is there a way to keep focus on the generated dialog so the user can type in the information? I can post my script if needed. or is there less messy way to get a string value from the user?

I'm using something similar to this :

from Tkinter import *
import sys

class popupWindow(object):
    def __init__(self,master):
        top=self.top=Toplevel(master)
        self.l=Label(top,text="Hello World")
        self.l.pack()
        self.e=Entry(top)
        self.e.pack()
        self.b=Button(top,text='Ok',command=self.cleanup)
        self.b.pack()
    def cleanup(self):
        self.value=self.e.get()
        self.top.destroy()

class mainWindow(object):
    def __init__(self,master):
        self.master=master
        self.b=Button(master,text="click me!",command=self.popup)
        self.b.pack()
        self.b2=Button(master,text="print value",command=lambda: sys.stdout.write(self.entryValue()+'\n'))
        self.b2.pack()

    def popup(self):
        self.w=popupWindow(self.master)
        self.master.wait_window(self.w.top)

    def entryValue(self):
        return self.w.value


if __name__ == "__main__":
    root=Tk()
    m=mainWindow(root)
    root.mainloop()

Answer 1

There is a base widget method called focus_force (see here) that will force focus to the specified application - this should capture user input. There is also a toplevel attribute called topmost which can be set (see here). After creating the window widget, you will need to call the method and set the attribute

i.e.:

window.focus_force()
window.wm_attributes("-topmost", 1)