Hierarchical treeview in Python GUI application

Last Updated : 28 Apr, 2025

Python uses different GUI applications that are helpful for the users while interacting with the applications they are using. There are basically three GUI(s) that python uses namely Tkinter, wxPython, and PyQt. All of these can operate with windows, Linux, and mac-OS. However, these GUI applications have many widgets i.e, controls that are helpful for the user interaction with the application. Some of the widgets are buttons, list boxes, scrollbar, treeview, etc.
Note: For more information, refer to Python GUI – tkinter

Treeview widgets

This widget is helpful in visualizing and permitting navigation over a hierarchy of items. It can display more than one feature of every item in the hierarchy. It can build a tree view as a user interface like in Windows explorer. Therefore, here we will use Tkinter in order to construct a hierarchical treeview in the Python GUI application.
Let's see an example of constructing a hierarchical treeview in Python GUI application.

The GUI would look like below:

Example:

Python

# Python program to illustrate the usage # of hierarchical treeview in python GUI # application using tkinter # Importing tkinter from tkinter import * # Importing ttk from tkinter from tkinter import ttk # Creating app window app = Tk() # Defining title of the app app.title("GUI Application of Python") # Defining label of the app and calling a geometry # management method i.e, pack in order to organize # widgets in form of blocks before locating them  # in the parent widget ttk.Label(app, text ="Treeview(hierarchical)").pack() # Creating treeview window treeview = ttk.Treeview(app) # Calling pack method on the treeview treeview.pack() # Inserting items to the treeview  # Inserting parent treeview.insert('', '0', 'item1', text ='GeeksforGeeks') # Inserting child treeview.insert('', '1', 'item2', text ='Computer Science') treeview.insert('', '2', 'item3', text ='GATE papers') treeview.insert('', 'end', 'item4', text ='Programming Languages') # Inserting more than one attribute of an item treeview.insert('item2', 'end', 'Algorithm', text ='Algorithm') treeview.insert('item2', 'end', 'Data structure', text ='Data structure') treeview.insert('item3', 'end', '2018 paper', text ='2018 paper') treeview.insert('item3', 'end', '2019 paper', text ='2019 paper') treeview.insert('item4', 'end', 'Python', text ='Python') treeview.insert('item4', 'end', 'Java', text ='Java') # Placing each child items in parent widget treeview.move('item2', 'item1', 'end') treeview.move('item3', 'item1', 'end') treeview.move('item4', 'item1', 'end') # Calling main()  app.mainloop()

Output:

In the above output, a hierarchical treeview is created. Where, GeeksforGeeks is the parent with Computer Science, GATE papers and Programming Languages as its child. And all the child have their respective attributes attached to them. At last, move() method is called here in order to connect all the children to the parent tree.