tkinter Delaying a function .after()

Example

.after(delay, callback=None) is a method defined for all tkinter widgets. This method simply calls the function callback after the given delay in ms. If no function is given, it acts similar to time.sleep (but in milliseconds instead of seconds)

Here is an example of how to create a simple timer using after:

# import tkinter
try:
    import tkinter as tk
except ImportError:
    import Tkinter as tk

class Timer:
    def __init__(self, parent):
        # variable storing time
        self.seconds = 0
        # label displaying time
        self.label = tk.Label(parent, text="0 s", font="Arial 30", width=10)
        self.label.pack()
        # start the timer
        self.label.after(1000, self.refresh_label)

    def refresh_label(self):
        """ refresh the content of the label every second """
        # increment the time
        self.seconds += 1
        # display the new time
        self.label.configure(text="%i s" % self.seconds)
        # request tkinter to call self.refresh after 1s (the delay is given in ms)
        self.label.after(1000, self.refresh_label)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    root = tk.Tk()
    timer = Timer(root)
    root.mainloop()