How to edit an element inside of a tkinter Grid?

Question

I'm working on a project to design a chessboard.

I have successfully created the board. My goal is to edit the board.

My original idea is to use buttons with the Tkinter grid to make the moves work.

I decided to make the board using:

window = tk.Tk() # Creating the GUI and Display
window.geometry("800x500")
window.minsize(800, 500) #Locking the size of the Display
window.maxsize(800, 500)
    
#Adding the board
SeenBoard = tk.Frame(window, width=300, height=300,padx=5,pady=5) #Adds padding to the grid
SeenBoard.pack(side=tk.LEFT) #the left isnt needed yet, but will be later
    
for row in range(8): # 8 Rows along
    for column in range(8): #8 Columns down
        tk.Button(SeenBoard,text=f"{row},{column}",width=5,height=3).grid(row=row, column=column) #Creates each button
    
window.mainloop() #Idk what this really does? it just kinda works.

My problem is that with this way of making the board, I cannot edit the buttons, nor locate them.

I wish to be able to change the color of each button, to alternate between green and white, for that grid pattern feel.
In order to do this I only can think of two ways at least, and that would be to somehow give each of the buttons an identifier beforehand, such as labeling them all as Grid1_1.button(...)
My problem with doing it manually is that I want to keep the code concise and not repetitive, so anyway in which I could add lots of them at once would solve my problem.

Second solution to my knowledge:

Somehow having the ability with Tkinter to select a specific grid slot, such as 2,2. and then trying to modify it with that, I heard about grid slaves, but I'm too small brained to understand how it works.

My request:

I would like to know the solution or even the concept behind trying to alternate the color of the board in a pattern. any method
Any solution that would allow me to access a button, and change its text/color.

You're asking a couple different things. You should limit a question post to only one question. — Nanigashi
– Nanigashi, Commented Jun 23 at 0:50

Advaith · Accepted Answer · 2025-06-23 20:33:02Z

2

To change the color of the checkerboard squares, one can make use of modulo 2. Here's a simple example showcasing that:

from tkinter import tk

COLOR_1 = "white"
COLOR_2 = "green"

for row in range(8): # 8 Rows along
    for column in range(8): #8 Columns down
        if (row + column) % 2:
            color = COLOR_1
        else:
            color = COLOR_2
        tk.Button(SeenBoard,text=f"{row},{column}",
                  width=5,
                  height=3,
                  bg=color).grid(row=row, column=column)

The reason row is added to column is to achieve an alternating pattern.

Consider a simple example of a 2x2 chessboard.

`row`	`col`	`row + col`	`( row + col ) % 2`
0	0	0	0
0	1	1	1
1	0	1	1
1	1	2	0

Which gives a pattern:

+---+---+
| 0 | 1 |
+---+---+
| 1 | 0 |
+---+---+

To access button objects in the future, simply store them in a nested list, using your row and column numbers as indexes:

# create a list to hold the buttons
array = list()
    
for row in range(8):
    # Create an array to store a row of buttons
    array.append(list())
    for column in range(8):
        # Append each column to the corresponding row
        array[row].append(tk.Button(SeenBoard,text=f"{row},{column}",
                  width=5,
                  height=3,
                  ))
        # Add it to the grid
        array[row][column].grid(row=row, column=column)

# Modify by using rows & columns as indexes
array[3][2]["text"] = "It works!"

This will also prevent your buttons from being garbage collected, since you're holding a reference to them.

Output:

Notice how the button at (3,2) is modified to say It works!.

As for the last question, the mainloop runs an event loop, which does two things:

It prevents the program from exiting after the last line of code.
It checks for events (such as a button press).

(In reality, things might work differently, but this is what it generally does)

edited Jun 23 at 20:33

answered Jun 23 at 1:59

Advaith

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3 Comments

Advaith Jun 23 at 2:12

If your question is answered, please mark the answer as accepted by clicking the check mark to the left. This will remove the question from the queue of unanswered questions! If you still have questions, I'm happy to assist.

acw1668 Jun 23 at 14:53

Actually (row + column) % 2 is enough for alternate color.

Advaith Jun 23 at 20:30

This is the way to go, it will make the program more efficient as well. I've modified the answer as well.

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