How to get the selected date for DateEntry in tkcalendar (Python)?

Question

I have a tkcalendar and it's pre-defined widget for Calendar, DateEntry and am trying to get the User's selected date for DateEntry. Whereas there is provision to extract the selected date for the Calendar widget using "selection_get()" but nothing for DateEntry that I could find.

I have tried get_date(),get(),_date(), cget(), ._selection() amongst many others but they don't seem to return/print the user-selected date. Please help, kindly let me know if any added information is needed

Code [picked from a simple tkcalendar tutorial]:

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk
from tkcalendar import Calendar, DateEntry

def calendar_view():
    def print_sel():
        print(cal.selection_get())

    top = tk.Toplevel(root)

    cal = Calendar(top,
                   font="Arial 14", selectmode='day',
                   cursor="hand1", year=2018, month=2, day=5)
    cal.pack(fill="both", expand=True)
    ttk.Button(top, text="ok", command=print_sel).pack()

def dateentry_view():
    top = tk.Toplevel(root)

    ttk.Label(top, text='Choose date').pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    cal = DateEntry(top, width=12, background='darkblue',
                    foreground='white', borderwidth=2)
    cal.pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    print(cal.cget(DateEntry))

root = tk.Tk()
s = ttk.Style(root)
s.theme_use('clam')

ttk.Button(root, text='Calendar', command=calendar_view()).pack(padx=10, pady=10)
ttk.Button(root, text='DateEntry', command=dateentry_view()).pack(padx=10, pady=10)

root.mainloop()

Answer 1

You mention you have tried get_date() and it didn't work, but that's actually the right function.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk
from tkcalendar import Calendar, DateEntry

def calendar_view():
    def print_sel():
        print(cal.selection_get())

    top = tk.Toplevel(root)

    cal = Calendar(top,
                   font="Arial 14", selectmode='day',
                   cursor="hand1", year=2018, month=2, day=5)
    cal.pack(fill="both", expand=True)
    ttk.Button(top, text="ok", command=print_sel).pack()

def dateentry_view():
    def print_sel():
        print(cal.get_date())
    top = tk.Toplevel(root)

    ttk.Label(top, text='Choose date').pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    cal = DateEntry(top, width=12, background='darkblue',
                    foreground='white', borderwidth=2)
    cal.pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    ttk.Button(top, text="ok", command=print_sel).pack()

root = tk.Tk()
s = ttk.Style(root)
s.theme_use('clam')

ttk.Button(root, text='Calendar', command=calendar_view).pack(padx=10, pady=10)
ttk.Button(root, text='DateEntry', command=dateentry_view).pack(padx=10, pady=10)

root.mainloop()

---

If you want to get the date every time it is changed you can use an event binding. From the documentation:

• Virtual Events

A <<CalendarSelected>> event is generated each time the user selects a day with the mouse.

So you can bind the function that gets the date to the <<CalendarSelected>> event:

def dateentry_view():
    def print_sel(e):
        print(cal.get_date())
    top = tk.Toplevel(root)

    ttk.Label(top, text='Choose date').pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    cal = DateEntry(top, width=12, background='darkblue',
                    foreground='white', borderwidth=2)
    cal.pack(padx=10, pady=10)
    cal.bind("<<DateEntrySelected>>", print_sel)