Develop Reference

Automatic GUI for python script with command line arguments?

Is there any software that auto generates GUI wrappers around python scripts?
My specific scenario is that i wrote a simple script for my father in law to bulk download some stuff from a given url.
Normally you just run the script via
python my_script.py --url https://test.com --dir C:\Downloads
and it just downloads all the relevant files from test.com to the Downloads folder.
I think he might be able to handle that but i am not sure and so i was thinking if there is any simple software out there that would allow me to take the script and turn it into an executable that just asks for all arguments and then has a simple run button to execute the script and download the things.
Ideally this would mean that he doesnt have to install python but at the very least allow for easier handling for him.
I am aware that there are libraries that allow for the creation of custom GUIs for python but thought that maybe there already exists something simpler and generic for my very simple and i also think fairly common use case.

I ended up using PyInstaller (thanks #Dexty) and rewriting the script to grab the arguments by asking for them via input.
Not exactly a GUI but that still allows the user to just double click the .exe and go from there instead of having to proactively use a CLI.

Tkinter program compiled with pyinstaller crash on launch

I'm asking help today because I'm new to Tkinter and Pyinstaller (and python in general) and I'm having troubles with it.
I have a simple app working with sqlite, tkinter and pyinstaller to compile all of this in an executable program, the entrance point of my program is a file named main.py
This file calls all the dependancies (like the sqlite module for python, tkinter and my other files like classes etc...)
I made a very simple interface, with a Hello World in a tkinter label and a button to go to page 2 which displays page2 (also in a label), just to see if I'm capable of making it all run and compile all of these pieces together.
I can run it throught my shell executing it like : python main.py and everything is working fine.
But when I run pyinstaller on my linux machine, and start executing the program, nothing appears, my database.db (sqlite database file) is created but I don't have any interface like when I run it with my shell. The thing is getting even worse on windows where, once I've my .exe it just opens a shell and crash after few seconds, not even creating the database.
What I did is I created a 'log file', in which I write the steps of the program.
As you can see on the following picture, the 2 first prints are wrote in my log file (on linux), so I think it crashes when I try to create the window.
If any of you have an idea on what I do wrong, I would really appreciate help :)

General
From the PyInstaller manual:
Before you attempt to bundle to one file, make sure your app works correctly when bundled to one folder. It is is much easier to diagnose problems in one-folder mode.
As the comments suggested, use a catch-all try/except block to log all exceptions to a file. That is probably the best way to see what is really happening. Make sure that the logfile is created in an existing location where you have the necessary permissions.
I would suggest to take advantage of the built-in logging module instead of creating your own. It can e.g. automatically add from which file a log line was created.
IMHO, it is probable that the failures on Linux and ms-windows have completely different causes. You should probably treat them as different issues.
Linux
When you use single file mode, that file is unpacked into a temporary folder, probably somewhere in /tmp. Some Linux distributions mount the /tmp filesystem with the noexec flag. This is incompatible with PyInstaller.
ms-windows
On windows, there are basically two different Pythons; python.exe and pythonw.exe. Basically it is one of the quirks of windows that this is necessary. The latter is for GUI programs like tkinter programs. A tkinter script should not show a cmd window. So I'm guessing that PyInstaller calls your command with python.exe instead of pythonw.exe. From the manual:
By default the bootloader creates a command-line console (a terminal window in GNU/Linux and Mac OS, a command window in Windows). It gives this window to the Python interpreter for its standard input and output. Your script’s use of print and input() are directed here. Error messages from Python and default logging output also appear in the console window.
An option for Windows and Mac OS is to tell PyInstaller to not provide a console window. The bootloader starts Python with no target for standard output or input. Do this when your script has a graphical interface for user input and can properly report its own diagnostics.
As noted in the CPython tutorial Appendix, for Windows a file extention of .pyw suppresses the console window that normally appears. Likewise, a console window will not be provided when using a myscript.pyw script with PyInstaller.
Also, on windows it can matter which Python distribution you're using. I used to be a fan of Anaconda, but lately I've come to prefer the python.org version because it gives me less headaches. On anaconda Python I had the problem that tkinter programs would not launch without showing a cmd window, whatever I tried. Only switching to python.org Python solved that problem.

How can I run a Python 3 program if a folder is selected

Say I have a folder called "Family Photos" and I want to automatically run a python program if that folder is selected. How would I go about doing that? Would I just put the code in the folder and it runs automatically?
Edit: I'm on Windows 10

You can use tkinter in python.
Tkinter is Python's de-facto standard GUI (Graphical User Interface) package. It is a thin object-oriented layer on top of Tcl/Tk.Tkinter is not the only GuiProgramming toolkit for Python. It is however the most commonly used one
You can use other GuiProgramming toolkits as well. Follow this_link to know about other gui frameworks.
For how part in Tkinter .Follow this_link

Some unix/linux systems are open source so you could modify the OS behavior to do that, i don't believe windows offer this feature, you probably should create an APP for that
The best solution would be a python scripts that run it self each hour and check if this folder is modified and do something if its, and it will run each time you turn on the computer once

python or pythonw in creating a cross-platform standalone GUI app

I am developing a simple standalone, graphical application in python. My development has been done on linux but I would like to distribute the application cross-platform.
I have a launcher script which checks a bunch of environment variables and then sets various configuration options, and then calls the application with what amounts to python main.py (specifically os.system('python main.py %s'% (arg1, arg2...)) )
On OS X (without X11), the launcher script crashed with an error like Could not run application, need access to screen. A very quick google search later, the script was working locally by replacing python main.py with pythonw main.py.
My question is, what is the best way to write the launcher script so that it can do the right thing across platforms and not crash? Note that this question is not asking how to determine what platform I am on. The solution "check to see if I am on OS X, and if so invoke pythonw instead" is what I have done for now, but it seems like a somewhat hacky fix because it depends on understanding the details of the windowing system (which could easily break sometime in the future) and I wonder if there is a cleaner way.
This question does not yet have a satisfactory answer.

If you save the file as main.pyw, it should run the script without opening up a new cmd/terminal.
Then you can run it as python main.pyw

Firstly, you should always use .pyw for GUIs.
Secondly, you could convert it to .exe if you want people without python to be able to use your program. The process is simple. The hardest part is downloading one of these:
for python 2.x: p2exe
for python 3.x: cx_Freeze
You can simply google instructions on how to use them if you decide to go down that path.
Also, if you're using messageboxes in your GUI, it won't work. You will have to create windows/toplevels instead.

How to turn Python program into executable file

I apologize for such a basic question. I've done some research online and still cannot figure out for the life of me how to turn a python folder into something like an actual app I can open in OS X. I am using Mac OS X, Terminal and Coderunner for my Python project.

Here are a few options:
Platypus is not Python-specific. It lets you wrap a simple GUI around a command line tool.
py2app is Python-specific and a good choice if you have a GUI, or need to run in the background.
PyInstaller is similar to py2app but cross-platform; I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works.
The right choice depends on what your program does; who is the expected audience — do you need to redistribute it, if so how, and so forth. If you want to make the application entirely self-contained — not dependent on anything else beyond the OS — then things get more complicated (though certainly not insoluble; there are several commercial Mac desktop apps written in Python.)

Typically you would make the script executable by putting
#!/usr/bin/env python
as the first line, and then in a terminal window typing
chmod u+x myscript.py
You might also want to put it in a special scripts folder and then add that to your PATH by editing .bash_profile. (I am putting a lot of buzz-words here to help you find the tutorials explaining how these things work.)
You can wrap your script into an Automator object if you want to try running it that way, but in the long run you will be better off getting comfortable working in a terminal window.
It would also help to know what your app does: Process files, generate a GUI, do a calculation, etc...