Dynamic table in tkinter that shows all text using horisontal scrollbar

Question

I am trying to create a dynamic table view using tkinter. My requirements are that it should have a scrollbar in both directions, such that a table cell containing a very long string can always be read. I thought that this should be fairly simple, but I haven't found any satisfying solution. Various posts on SO claim that either this or that is not possible in tkinter and that we should create different hacks. One such example is this post . It sort of works for making the horisontal bar function as one would expect, but it is not a stable solution, because it fails in many cases, and seems arbitrary in regards to what sizes work. Finally and most importantly it does not take into account, the length of text within a table cell - so a cutoff still appears if size is not known prior to creation. Furthermore other containers such as Canvas or Label have not provided the optimal solution.

Please note that I am aware of the option to use external wrappers such as tktable , but that is not a sufficient solution for me, as I would like to do this using tkinter only.

In order to show some effort, I have created a MWE that does everything i want, but fails to incorporate the horisontal scrollbar, such that the very long string can be read.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk
import random
import string

class MWEapp(tk.Tk):
    def __init__(self):
        tk.Tk.__init__(self)
        # these containers are perhaps a bit too much for this example
        # but in the full code, this class is inheriting from a larger design
        self.wndcnt = ttk.Frame(self)
        self.wndcnt.pack(fill=None, expand=False, side="top", padx=20, pady=20)

        # add container to table
        tblcnt = ttk.Frame(self)
        tblcnt.pack(anchor="center")

        # add scrollbar
        scrollbary = ttk.Scrollbar(tblcnt, orient="vertical")
        scrollbary.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky="ns")
        scrollbarx = ttk.Scrollbar(tblcnt, orient="horizontal")
        scrollbarx.grid(row=1, column=0, sticky="ew")

        # use treeview to create table
        self.dynamictable = ttk.Treeview(
            tblcnt,
            column=("#1", "#2", "#3", "#4", "#5"),
            show="headings",
            height=30,
            xscrollcommand=scrollbarx.set,
            yscrollcommand=scrollbary.set
        )
        # bind mouse click to scroll callbacks
        self.dynamictable.bind("<Button-1>", self._scroll_init)
        self.dynamictable.bind("<B1-Motion>", self._scroll)
        self.last_y = 0
        self.dynamictable.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")
        scrollbarx["command"] = self.dynamictable.xview
        scrollbary["command"] = self.dynamictable.yview

        # add headers
        self.dynamictable.heading("#1", anchor="w", text="Header 1")
        self.dynamictable.heading("#2", anchor="w", text="Header 2")
        self.dynamictable.heading("#3", anchor="w", text="Header 3")
        self.dynamictable.heading("#4", anchor="w", text="Header 4")
        self.dynamictable.heading("#5", anchor="w", text="Header 5")
        # add columns
        self.dynamictable.column("#1", anchor="w", width=100, stretch=False)
        self.dynamictable.column("#2", anchor="w", width=200, stretch=False)
        self.dynamictable.column("#3", anchor="w", width=200, stretch=False)
        self.dynamictable.column("#4", anchor="w", width=150, stretch=False)
        self.dynamictable.column("#5", anchor="w", width=500, stretch=False)
        # fill table at constant rate
        self._fill_tbl()

    def _rstr(self, N):
        #generate pseudo string with N characters.
        return ''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.ascii_lowercase + string.digits) for _ in range(N))

    def _dummy_data(self):
        # dummy data
        longstring = """Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."""

        # dummy data is a list of 5-tuples containing strings
        database_data = []
        for i in range(50):
            if i == 10:
                database_data.append((str(i),self._rstr(10),self._rstr(15),self._rstr(6),longstring))
            else:
                database_data.append((str(i),self._rstr(10),self._rstr(15),self._rstr(6),self._rstr(30)))

        return database_data

    def _fill_tbl(self):

        database_data = self._dummy_data()

        # clear previous table
        self.dynamictable.delete(*self.dynamictable.get_children())

        # add dummy data
        for row in database_data:
            self.dynamictable.insert("","end",values=(row[0],row[1],row[2],row[3],row[4],),)

        # keep refreshing data each second
        self.after(1000, self._fill_tbl)

    # callbacks for touch scroll
    def _scroll_init(self, event):
        self.last_y = event.y
    def _scroll(self, event):
        delta = -1 if event.y > self.last_y else 1
        self.last_y = event.y
        self.dynamictable.yview_scroll(delta, "units")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = MWEapp()
    app.mainloop()

Hope someone can help, thanks!